


But Sokka Does Not Flinch

by Drakey



Series: Landscapes [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aangxiety, Anxiety, Consequences, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderfluid Toph, M/M, Momo With A Knife, Multi, Neurodivergent Aang, Neurodivergent Sokka, Neurodivergent Zuko, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Platonic Soulmates, Polyamory, Redemption, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 44,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: Aang barely escapes Ba Sing Se alive, and that feels like losing, but he doesn't know how to redeem himself.Toph barely escapes Ba Sing Se alive, but they have Smellerbee and that feels like winning.Jet doesn't escape Ba Sing Se, but continuing the fight feels like a victory all its own.Azula takes Ba Sing Se for herself, so why does it feel like the next step in losing?
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Azula/Mai (Avatar), Bato/Hakoda (Avatar), Jet/Jin (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Yue/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Smellerbee
Series: Landscapes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871992
Comments: 251
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Welcome to part 3 of Landscapes!
> 
> An acknowledgement first, to my excellent sounding board, the inestimable [Miss Rust!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Rust/profile) You're always ready to listen to me ramble about my ridiculous, ridiculous ideas, and I super appreciate it!

Sengge is lanky, with a bright, broad smile and a bad habit of seducing someone in every town he visits. His hands are covered with ink all the time, in an ever-changing pattern that he points to when he wants to tell stories to children. He carries a staff, and he wears the same green and yellow and brown as anyone else in the hills around Omashu.

He's probably a little in love with the strange young prince who helps to manage the city itself. There's a terrible pain in knowing, and in sharing the knowledge, the pain lifts, just a little, but Sengge still flinches away from it. It doesn't help to know that his soulmate is somewhere, alive, but far, far away.

Bumi claims, with little evidence, that the Avatar has run away (does Sengge have the right to call him Aang? Sometimes, he fantasizes about a man his age coming to take him into the sky. He has done his best to preserve what little is left of the sky bison, but somehow he is sure his soulmate's mount lives and would fly him as he's wanted to fly for decades). Sengge doubts that Bumi's disappointment is entirely accurate. After all, if Aang had fled out of cowardice...

The Avatar did not run away. Not precisely. Sengge knows the sort of man he is, and he can think of many different reasons for that to be the sort of man the Avatar needs, but so few of them involve his bravery. Sengge isn't particularly brave.

A sage once told him that when his arrows glow and his bending becomes, for a bare few moments, unbelievably powerful, it is because he is taking hold of the Avatar State from his soulmate. This makes sense, in a way, but the sage also said that he is supposed to be able to do it for much longer. 

He wishes his people were still alive. For thirty years, he has flinched away from the thought of what happened to them, but he doesn't anymore. It's not that it isn't an infinite well of pain, but the pain is something he has grown used to, like the space where that Fire Nation soldier knocked out one of his teeth. 

He wishes he could get warm. That's been a problem for thirty years, too. He recalls that lovely woman from the Colonial Border, who claimed he was too cold to keep in bed, and the old farmer from just south of the Beacon of Hope Lighthouse who had him cool the water for their green tea by holding it. He wants to feel warm again just once.

But these days, “warm” can come all too suddenly on ships out of the west, and Sengge...

The one thing he can't do is fight the Fire Nation. This makes what he is doing right now especially unwise. Naturally, he is going to keep doing it, because otherwise, the people of Gaipan will die. Another Fire Nation soldier falls to his staff, and he turns to see them staring at him.

“It's The Nomad,” one of them says.

“You get him,” another says, shoving one of his comrades forward.

“I am _not_ attacking _The Nomad_ on my own,” the man who's been pushed objects.

“Cowards!” a voice says from behind them, and a man steps through the ranks, grinning. “It's one man, playing dress-up and trying to scare you with cheap tricks. There's no airbenders here. He hasn't bent _anything!”_

Because Sengge has spent a little too much time around Bumi, and because he has spent a little too long among soldiers, and because probably the best thing he was supposed to offer to the Avatar is his irreverence (which has been an asset in the strangest situations), he says “sure I did. I bent your soldiers over and kicked their asses.”

Okay, that was both irreverant and unwise. Now the (very large) Fire Nation soldier is attacking him, and yup, that's a bender. Flames wash out of his hands over the place where Sengge is standing, but Sengge dances away before they can hit him. He swings with his staff, and he misses, badly. That's okay. The end of his staff passes through the flames, disrupting them.

Well, most of them. A few licks here and there catch his clothes, and he is forced to whip off his shirt and stick the end of his staff through the handle of a bucket, throwing it towards the firebender as a projectile. It hits the man, and he reels backwards. Sengge takes a moment to look around. The people are safe inside. He turns and runs, letting the Fire Nation soldiers chase after him. There are two more gates here. They'll probably close them up after this out of spite. But then...

The forest is a pretty good place for an ambush. A lick of fire scorches his ribs as he runs, but this fight isn't over until _he_ decides it's over. Sengge makes for the woods.

+

Katara twitches, and she groans. There's a single point of fire on her back, and from it, there's a radiating network of of furious, screaming pain. She squeezes her eyes shut. “Zuko!” She yells.

There are footsteps next to her, clattering across a metal floor, and then soothing coolness on her back that dulls the pain. With that pain gone, there are dozens of other aches that erupt across her body. A stinging burn on her side, a deep, thumping pain in her right leg, electric tightness across her fingertips, and any number of other pains, all slowly fading away. 

“Zuko what happened?” Katara says.

“Azula can make lightning. She hit Aang with it.”

“Where am I?” Katara asks.

There is a long silence. Finally, Zuko says “We've been calling it the _Foxglove,_ but it was originally the _Ascendant Dawn.”_

Katara thinks this over for a minute. _Ascendant Dawn_ is definitely something the Fire Nation would name a ship. The sound of an engine fills in the background of the room, just like aboard the _Snapdragon,_ but it's deeper and... steadier.

“How did we get a big ship?”

“It was Sokka's plan,” Zuko says proudly. “But we couldn't have done it without your father.” He sighs. Katara opens her eyes to see Zuko healing Aang, too. They're on separate beds, about three feet off the floor, maybe three feet apart. The room looks like if the tiny infirmary from the _Snapdragon_ was sized up by about three times. Aang stirs a little under Zuko's touch and turns to aim half-lidded eyes at Katara. They drift closed again. Momo crawls across the floor between them, looking nervously at Aang.

“My father is here? Who's with us? Who... who made it?”

“We're not sure,” Zuko admits. “When Aang got hit, we had to run. Sokka took off, but we got you two and Toph and Smellerbee. Suki threw my sister off the palace, but she got up and walked away.” He says that part very neutrally. Probably not sure how to feel about it, Katara guesses. “It's been three weeks. You and Aang have been... in and out. But neither of you were making much sense. You had a whole conversation about badgermoles with Sokka, where you insisted on calling him Daraq. Aang seemed to be convinced he was Avatar Kyoshi for a while. Which I guess he is, but he seemed to think he was... um. You know, currently, actively Avatar Kyoshi.”

“I don't remember that,” Aang mumbles, “but I did have a lot of crazy dreams.”

“Me too,” Katara says. 

“I have to slow down on the healing now,” Zuko says. He eases off, and the pain in Katara's back slowly comes back, not as bad as it was before. “We know Azula is alive. She brought in some Fire Nation soldiers, and then she kicked out the ones who were loyal to... our father, so... um... we're not sure how many sides there are in the war right now. We've seen wanted posters for Uncle, Jet, and the Kyoshi Warriors, but none for Jee, Jin, or Longshot. Smellerbee is really worried. None of what we know is any newer than two weeks, though. We were finally able to send a message to Uncle and the White Lotus last week, though, so we're hoping to get word soon.”

Zuko takes his hand away from Katara's back, and she tries to analyze her pain in a reasonable, detached way.

It fucking hurts.

She decides not to focus on it anymore.

“Oh. Also, Toph got annoyed with not being able to see anything, so they invented a whole new type of bending.”

Katara starts levering herself up out of the little medical bed because there's _no way that's good,_ but Aang just says “That's amazing! What did they learn to bend?”

“Metal,” Zuko says. “Hakoda is scared of them now.”

“I was _already_ afraid of Toph,” Katara says. Zuko isn't stopping her from sitting up, so she arranges herself carefully on the cot. Momo picks up a little knife from a tray on a counter and brings it to her. Katara glares at Zuko. “You've been giving him too many knives.”

“That lemur has saved us all with a knife, like, eight times, Katara.” Zuko pats Momo's head.

“He's still a lemur,” Katara argues.

“What about Six Piers Burning? If Momo hadn't had—” 

“I thought we agreed not to discuss Momo's role in that,” Katara interrupts. “Where's Sokka?”

“Asleep in our cabin,” Zuko says. “I'll make him put on pants and come say hi.”

“Didn't need to know that much, thanks,” Katara says. “Can Aang and I get up now?”

Zuko gives her a confused look. “You're already up?”

Katara sighs. “Yeah. Um. Look, don't wake Sokka up. Are there... showers here?”

Zuko nods. He describes how to get to the showers, and it's fairly easy to puzzle it out. The _Foxglove_ isn't much different from the _Snapdragon._ Sure, they were built about fifty years apart, but, wandering through the halls ten minutes after Zuko leaves to go find a snack, it's very obvious that they're both meant to be fast cruisers, and the design didn't change much in fifty years. Why change something that works?


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, this? This is exactly why I don't like this plan,” Jet whispers.

Suki glares at him. From the top of the wall around Azula's giant ridiculous stockpile of glowing crystals, they can basically dance a jig without anyone noticing, but the instant anyone goes down there, they'll be highlighted by the giant ridiculous stockpile of glowing crystals.

“You're the one who climbed up here with me,” Suki points out, and _screw you, Suki, for being correct._

Jet starts to fiddle with the hilts of his swords. “It was still your idea.”

Longshot's head pokes up over the side of the wall, and he reaches to help Jin up. Jin looks over the side of the wall and frowns. “We need a distraction.” Longshot looks between Jet, Jin, and Suki, and he shrugs.

“I have to do this myself, don't I?” Jet growls.

Jin drops a hand onto the top of his head. He blinks. “Jet, we're your friends. You can trust us to do our part. I'm going to go back down, and I'll explain the situation to Jee, and then he'll... well, it's Jee, and he's working through some stuff right now, so he'll probably blow something up.”

“I can appreciate that that's how he deals with stress,” Suki says as Jin vaults over the side of the wall.

“He could just offer to suck Uncle's—” Longshot clamps a hand over Jet's mouth and gives him a disapproving look. When he takes his hand away, Jet glares at him. “Am I the only one who thinks Uncle would go for it?”

“Uncle would ask him if it would actually make him happy, then they'd have a heart to heart about it, then Jee would cry.” Suki frowns. “I really wish we could find that poor man a boyfriend.”

“We could if he'd stop pining after Uncle,” Jet grumbles. 

Longshot leans in towards him and raises an eyebrow. 

“Oh, like we need him to actually say it,” Jet replies. “It's so obvious.”

Longshot rolls his eyes. Jet chooses not to dignify that with a response.

“I think we could find him a man pretty easy,” Suki says. She frowns. “But maybe not in Ba Sing Se. People here aren't likely to respond well to... you know...”

“A firebending terrorist Freedom Fighter who's still hung up on the Dragon of the West?” Jet offers helpfully. 

Longshot sighs.

“Look, I'm not just being aimlessly jerky here, okay? Why does everyone always think that about me?” Jet glares at the giant ridiculous stockpile of glowing crystals. Stupid Azula and her stupid crystal stockpile. He ignores the Look that Longshot is definitely giving him.

Then Suki goes and actually says it. “You're still hung up on Zuko.”

_“That_ is... not your business.” ~~Screw you, Suki, for being correct.~~ “It's also not relevant. We're talking about Jee.”

“I thought we were talking about how much you don't like this plan,” Suki says.

Jet glares at her. “You know what?”

There's a huge explosion about a quarter mile away, and all the guards below are suddenly really distracted. Longshot launches his rope-arrow.

+

When Jee returns with the Freedom Fighters, they're all coated in a fine layer of soot, and Jet, Suki, and Longshot are also glowing blue-green, which probably means the mission was successful. Iroh finishes setting out the tea while Kyoyo bends the crystals out of their clothes. They gather around her hands, and she squishes them together with a gesture, then sticks the resulting orb to the ceiling.

“You didn't leave a trail, did you?” Kyoyo asks.

Jet shakes his head. “No. We had to jump in a fountain, but we didn't leave a trail.”

Kyoyo pokes her head out the door, then bends the wall back into place over it. Jee sits down a few paces from Iroh, and Jin sits between them. “I found that Fire Nation cell from all the posters,” he says. “They never knew what hit them.” He looks down at the ground. “Well, they know it was the Dai Li eventually, but they were very confused by the firebending at the start. I imagine that will ultimately strengthen Azula's position, but it helped us.”

“He means it was fun,” Suki says.

“He's right,” Sohi adds. “I had so much fun beating up those firebenders.” She glances nervously at Iroh. “No offense.”

Iroh grins. “None taken. Many of my countrymen are sadly in need of solid corrections.” He sips his tea. Jasmine. They've had enormous trouble finding ginseng, which is just not fair, but he chooses to take it as a sign that Azula is thinking of him: he's pretty sure she knows ginseng is his favorite, and it seems like her to have it removed from the city out of spite.

This theory is not exactly comforting, but some connection is better than none at all, and the thought of an entire room of tea collected purely out of spite is a little amusing, if only because it helps to emphasize just how young his niece really is.

King Kuei staggers in from the bedrooms behind them as they are still chatting about the mission, and Iroh calmly passes him a cup of bracing green. “How are you today, Your Majesty?” Iroh asks.

“I fell asleep with my face in Bosco's haunch and now everything smells like unwashed bear,” Kuei complains. He sniffs his tea and sighs with discontent. “Bear.”

“Your Earth King, everyone,” Jet grumbles. The boy is recovering well from his ordeal with the Dai Li, but his previous disdain for authority seems to have grown into outright contempt. So far, it hasn't been a problem, but Iroh stands up and smiles at Jet.

“Jet, I would like some help carrying food for our dinner. Could you come with me?”

Jet grumbles again, even louder this time, but nobody likes to say no to Iroh outright, so he follows. Their little hideout, buried under the wall between the lower and middle rings, has six large bedrooms, three bathrooms, a decent-sized kitchen, a war room that also serves as the general public space, and a big storage room that's kept cold by one of the underground streams that run beneath Ba Sing Se. Jet walks ahead of Iroh, and Iroh keeps his silence until they get to the storage room.

“You were very rude to King Kuei,” Iroh says.

“He's an idiot,” Jet replies. Iroh looks over their limited supply of meat and selects what they have the most of.

“He is learning. I will not deny that he has a long way to go before he is ready to rule, but you must know that he is trying his best.”

“His best isn't very good.” Jet leans against a stack of empty crates. “I'm the only one here who's ever run a resistance.”

“Jet, when you ran a resistance, you framed innocent men as assassins and tried to kill an entire town. I know what it is like to believe that you are the best leader available, and I know how hard it is to admit that you may not be.” Iroh stacks up some meats in a spare crate. “I respect your abilities, Jet. You are a talented fighter and a good leader, but the time to correct the mistakes of others is when their mistakes are important. King Kuei did nothing to earn an insult.”

“I...” Jet glares at the crate Iroh is filling and starts grabbing carrotatoes and broccotake mushrooms to toss in with the meat. “I always expected the Earth King to be able to help,” he admits. “When I was little, and the Fire Nation was marching towards my village, Mom and Dad said that the Earth King would protect us with his armies. But then he didn't. And then when I joined the Freedom Fighters, Tag said we just had to hold out for the Earth King to send help, but she died, and we never got the help. Then, when I...” Jet closes his eyes. “When I did... what I did to Gaipan... I thought that might make the Earth King send his army.” When Jet opens his eyes again, they're suspiciously damp. “I thought maybe he didn't send help because I was... bad.” Jet looks at the collection of meat and vegetables in the crate and lifts it up. “At least that kind of made sense. But it turns out the Earth King was just a sheltered nobody who barely even knew he was in charge.”

Iroh nods and opens the door for Jet. “In the Southern Water Tribe, the people choose their leaders, and the leaders sometimes step down to let someone who will handle the current situation better take over. Chief Hakoda told me a story once of one of his ancestors, a waterbending master who was chief during a terrible famine. He was a harsh, angry man who ruled by forcing his people to accept his will, but when he saw that his people must find help, he asked a wise young woman who was courting an Earth Kingdom merchant to take his place. She convinced her lover to send food, and she built powerful ties with the Earth Kingdom. When her skills were no longer required to lead the Tribe, she called for the people to choose a new chief, and they put the most skilled healer in place as the new leader. No one is the perfect leader for all times. This is why the Earth Kingdom has so many kings.”

Jet keeps his peace on that until he sets down the crate in the kitchen. “I think I'd probably like the Southern Water Tribe.”

“I think so, too,” Iroh says.


	3. Chapter 3

Azula's head stopped hurting last night. She's not sure when, exactly, it happened, but it's a huge relief. Now, if the leg and the ribs would follow suit, everything would be perfect. Being the Earth Queen is exhausting, even without worrying about Long Feng starting up another coup attempt, and dealing with pain just makes it worse. Not to mention how delicate her position is, politically. Long Feng and his cronies were politically toxic and nobody objected to getting rid of them, but now, any disloyalty she finds is too entrenched to purge. Her advisors are a nest of shirshu, but they're a well-liked nest, so executing them all and starting over is out of the question.

One of them is probably the leak that allowed the destruction of General Shola's giant ridiculous glowing crystal stockpile, which is threatening to bring back the headache. Naturally, they can be neither interrogated nor rooted out with random executions.

What's more, the letter from Father is still sitting there on the table beside her, and while it's certainly _congratulatory,_ the tone of command is enough to tell Azula exactly what will happen if Father thinks she's about to disobey him.

“Maybe I should have killed Zuko and Uncle when I had the chance,” she muses. “I doubt they would have gotten away if Zuzu wasn't there to help. This could all be over by now.”

Ty Lee perks up at the words. “I dunno, I kinda think Mai would be disappointed. You know how she's got that huge crush on your brother.”

“I do not,” Mai lies in her usual deadpan.

“Mai, you kissed him at the turtleduck pond when you were twelve,” Azula says. “Really, you're not fooling anyone.”

Mai glares at Ty Lee. “He was cuter then, and didn't have a boyfriend.”

Ty Lee laughs brightly and goes to take another turn around the throne room, leaping from floor to pillar to wall to rafter. When she gets to the ceiling, she dangles by her knees and sticks her tongue out at the Dai Li guards. “It is kind of a problem, though. We have the Earth Kingdom, but... well, your uncle was right. We're not winning.”

Azula really can't wait for the physicians to say she's ready to firebend again, because it would be so nice to scare the _shit_ out of Ty Lee for comments like that. Annoyingly, though...

“You're right, of course,” Azula says. “We need to do something to change things, but all of the Earth Kingdom's old allies are... unimpressed with me. Their loss, really.” She frowns. “Of course, they all love Uncle, for some reason. Maybe he's been drugging their tea.”

“I think it's because he's a kind old man who apologizes for his mistakes,” Ty Lee says. She drops from the ceiling, arcing gracefully to the little canopy over Azula's throne.

“That would explain why they like him, but not why they _listen_ to him,” Mai says. She turns to Azula. “It sounds like you have an idea.”

Azula nods. The idea is forming slowly, but Mai always _does_ know when Azula's getting an idea. It's the best thing about her. ~~That's not entirely true. Mai's greatest asset is definitely her smile, which she has even used to manipulate _Azula_ on occasion. Azula kinda loves that.~~

“The first step is to capture Uncle. After that, everything will fall into place a lot more easily. If everyone loves him and listens to him, then we need to have him, obviously. Lee!” One of the Dai Li steps forward.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Fetch me some of that soothing tea that helps with the pain. And bring us all some of the ginseng. We're going to be planning for a while.”

+

Aang wakes up waterlogged, aching, and embarrassed. 

One day, he's going to learn to just stick with Katara when she says they all need to work together. Today, he thinks as he stares at the ash-speckled sky over Crescent Island, he's going to go find a slightly more comfortable stretch of beach, and he's going to be quietly miserable until he can gather the energy to go look for his friends.

Step one: sit up.

There are several long moments in which the entirety of Aang's being debates on the idea of sitting up. Step one might be a no-go. Okay, what's step two? Move to a comfier part of the island.

That.... is predicated on doing step one.

Why must steps always go in order like that? It's very rude of them. Sokka never seems to have this much trouble with doing steps in order. Forgetting things? Sure. Having hugely complicated plans that nobody can possibly follow because he gets really anxious and overthinks stuff? Oh yeah, sure. But at least Sokka gets his steps done in order without much trouble. About half the time. Which is pretty good considering how often the entire universe tries to kill them all in mid-plan.

Okay, back to step one: sit up.

“Aang!”

Aang twitches a little and flops his head to the right to look. Katara is running down the black rock of the beach towards him. Sokka, Toph, Zuko, and Smellerbee are behind her. Aang's back twitches in sympathy with her, and a moment later, a stab of pain shoots through him. Katara flinches, but she comes down to her knees beside him and wraps him up in a fierce hug. 

“Aang, did you really go off to do something impossible in order to restore your honor?” Zuko says.

Aang feels himself blushing. He looks down at the ground underneath him and scrapes his heels gently along the rocks. They're smooth and cool, even though there's a lava flow not thirty feet away. Did he really just sleep thirty feet from a lava flow? He's lucky to be alive. “Maybe,” he says.

Zuko rolls his eyes and bends down to hug him next to Katara. “Aang, you stupid motherfucker, that's my job,” he says gently.

Sokka's face, lit by a smile between all the burns, pokes into the space between Zuko's head and Katara's shoulder as Smellerbee says “next time you scare us like that, I'm stabbing you.”

“Oh shut up, Smellerbee, you like him,” Toph laughs. She joins the hug next, followed by Smellerbee swatting him happily on the back of the head. The moment is ruined by Toph jumping. “What is _that?”_ she exclaims. She reaches for the water and draws out... “Oh. Um... I found your glider, Aang. I think it's maybe a little...”

Aang looks at the glider.

Another thing lost. Monk Gyatso never taught him to build a glider. Aang's chest tightens and his eyes water at the sight of the shredded, broken thing. Katara must feel him tense, because she squeezes tighter. “I... it's okay. You're right, Sokka. The glider would give me away. It's better if people don't know that I'm... that I'm alive.”

“Oh, Aang, I'm so sorry,” Katara says. 

Aang wraps his arms around her and lets his friends support him in his climb back to his feet. He takes what's left of the glider to the nearest lava and wedges it into a crack in the rocks. The heat is intense, and they watch for a minute while the flames creep up the sides of the wood.

“Katara, can I talk to you alone?” Aang says.

Katara nods. She walks him down the beach to a flatter spot towards the end of the island. “Tell me what's going on, Aang,” she says.

Aang sits. There's kelp in the water, and he pokes at it with one toe while he gathers his thoughts. “I love you,” he says, and it's funny, that the first time he says it out loud to her would be while they're cold and miserable on a deserted volcanic island. “I don't think I've been doing a very good job of loving you lately, though. I kinda...” He risks a glance at her eyes. They are bright and understanding. He looks back to the water. Salt has dried onto his clothes and most of his body. “I freaked out, and I was scared because everyone said it was good for people to think I'm dead, and I thought I was just running away again.” Aang shudders a little “I don't want to run away from my problems, and then... I did it again. I told myself I was running towards my problems, just going to confront them, but... soulmates are for destiny, Katara. You and me, and Toph and Smellerbee, and Sokka and Zuko... we're all supposed to work together, but this invasion plan is going to hurt so many people, and too many of them are going to be on our side. I hate it because I should be able to do this alone.”

“But you can't,” Katara says, and Aang isn't sure if she means to scold or to empathize, but he kinda loves her for it either way. “I... I never thought I needed to do _everything_ by myself, but I... being the only waterbender in the Tribe was horrible. It took me a long time to accept that my skills weren't enough to maintain all the houses and keep the village water supply fresh and pull up fish in the lean times. It was okay, though. No one can expect any one person to do everything. Not even the Avatar. The rest of the village did what they could when I couldn't do it all. And you know what else? It's not fair. Okay? What happened to you...” tears gather in her voice between one breath and the next. “What happened to you was awful, and I hate it so much, and it wasn't fair. It's not fair because what happened to _me_ wasn't fair, and what happened to me is just... what happened to you, but slower. I've lost my people one piece at a time, like a snowman melting away in the summerday. You never even saw the warnings. It happened all at once and I'm so, so sorry.” She sits behind him and wraps her arms around his chest, in the _just right_ way she knows. “I still have something left, and we're asking you to pretend to the whole world that there's nothing at all anymore, that it's just... Appa all alone with Zuko and Sokka and Toph and Smellerbee.”

Aang isn't sure exactly when he started crying, but at the thought of that, he lets go of all his control and just sobs, leaning over while Katara leans forward, the weight of her almost enough of a comfort against his back. 

There _is_ nothing left, in so many ways. There is so much he's never going to get back, no matter how hard he tries. No new gliders, so many of the old songs and stories gone, the men who could weave the traditional shawls, not even buried all those years ago, books and art and traditions and whole religious _orders,_ ancient routes to hidden places he'll never know, techniques and foods and jokes and poetry, accents no one will ever have again, different types of airbender tattoos, animals once domestic and now feral or extinct, crops never cultivated, homes abandoned, a whole _world_ burnt to ash and he's just added his glider to the top of the pile, his clothes singed to nothing and he'll never have them exactly right again, and the weight of everything that's gone is a mountain crushing him into Katara's arms.

She is speaking, but he hasn't heard her over his own crying until, finally, he calms enough to curl into her, his side to her and his head resting on his knees. She runs her right hand across the top of his head, whispering to him, “shh... I'm here, Aang. I have you. I love you so much, Aang. I'm here.” 

Finally, when it seems like another cry might just kill him, he feels himself go silent. When his backside aches from so long on the hard rock below, he finally says “Why didn't any of you tell me how bad hair itches?”

Katara lets out a watery giggle. “You made me go through it, Iceberg Boy, I was just returning the favor,” she says, and she presses a little kiss to the top of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is... oof.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for Northern Water Tribe style casual sexism.

The speck on the horizon isn't a Water Tribe ship. It's too tall, the sails too complex. It doesn't seem to be a Fire Nation ship, either. Father's scouts immobilize it far out and return before midday with their report. “They're from the Earth Kingdom, Chief,” Koriq, the head of the scouting expedition, reports. Father rocks back on his heels. “They're out of schedule and not using a military ship, though. Chief, they're refugees. They're saying Ba Sing Se has fallen.”

Yue tries not to gasp aloud, but it's almost impossible. Sokka and Zuko are in Ba Sing Se, or they were, the last she heard. “Father, we have to let them in,” she says.

“Absolutely not,” Koriq says. “The military ships are bad enough, we can't have a shipful of foreigners staying indefinitely! Keep your tongue, girl!”

“They'll have news of the Avatar,” Yue says. “He was in Ba Sing Se, so he must have been there when it fell.”

“Then they can give us their news—” 

“They can give us their news here, in person, when you let them in,” Father snaps. Koriq flinches at his tone. “Get to it. And keep in mind that my daughter outranks you enough to order you thrown in the sea.”

Koriq blanches a little “But Chief, we can't just let them run around anywhere!”

“I'll take care of that. That's my job, as _Chief._ Now go do your job, as _a man who takes orders from the Chief.”_

Koriq, apparently catching on to the fact that Father might actually let Yue order him thrown into the sea if he keeps this up, bows respectfully and vanishes the way he came. 

Father rubs at his temples. “He may have been a politically inept ass who treated you like a piece of meat, but at least Hahn had the decency to have no backbone, instead of questioning every single order he ever got like that imbecile.” He starts for the door, heading to the council room. Yue follows. Her crash course in governance involves a lot of sitting in on things like this, and Father is about to give her a fairly intense demonstration. When they walk in, the Councilors are all assembled, some of them clearly just roused from sleep. 

“I see you've all heard about our guests,” Father says, instantly focusing everyone's attention. “It's good of you to come so promptly.” This is a basic technique. Open flattery and tacitly ignoring the shortcomings of your colleagues. It's been three hours since the ship was spotted, and some of these men have not been here for even twenty minutes. Yugoda steps out of the crowd, coming up to Yue's side as Father continues to speak, moving into the giving orders phase of the meeting. “I sent out scouts when we first spotted them. We've just gotten word back that they're Earth Kingdom refugees. They're claiming that Ba Sing Se has fallen. In order to learn everything we can, and because we are _decent human beings,_ we're going to take them into the city and offer them shelter. Petok, Riq, your district is going to house them. That's where we have the most spare housing. I need you two to prepare warm homes for them. Vatan, I promise you that none of these people have a proper coat. Organize the women. Get them to collect castoffs and spares. I want one spare and one castoff for every family in the tribe. That doesn't mean one from each family. If someone has nothing, collect more from the ones who can spare the most. Rarloq, get your men to Petok and Riq's district. Until we've had the chance to talk to all of them, you job is to keep them in that district. They'll need to use our markets, so be ready to escort them there. For now, they'll only be allowed in their district, at the markets, and at the palace by appointment. Pakku, Yugoda, station waterbenders there. I want a fighter for every healer. Lo, start organizing the city's cooks. I want a feast set up to welcome them in their district. Treat it as a festival, be ready to feed every mouth in the city at least twice. We're going to _welcome_ these people, so get to it!”

Yue turns to Yugoda. “Do you need help?”

“No,” Yugoda says. “Go with Vatan. He'll have some valuable things to teach you.”

Yue nods and hurries to trail after the city's quartermaster. Vatan looks over his shoulder at her. “Ready to learn about the part of the job that pisses people off?” he says.

Yue nods.

The part of the job that pisses people off is apparently much eased by thoroughly and politely explaining what their sacrifice is for, making sure you don't take more than necessary, and keeping thorough records: Yue is employed in drawing what each cloak and boot they collect looks like and who they come from. She has it down to a science by the time they bring thousands of spare articles of clothing to the docks. By the time it's all sorted and ready, the Earth Kingdom ship is nearly there. Yue finds Father waiting by the dockside.

She receives the reports in drips and drabs, the parts all jumbled and out of order. The ship, though not as large as the biggest Fire Navy ships that attacked them, dwarfs any Water Tribe ship. Its nearly five hundred passengers are mostly from the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, but the ship's owner, a noble general named Sako, managed to smuggle several noble families out of the upper ring (what the rings are, Yue has no idea, except that apparently nobility lives in the upper ring). Most people know nothing. Some of the nobles saw fighting at the Earth Palace, on a few different days. The Avatar and his friends apparently rooted out some corruption in Ba Sing Se's highest powers, not without a huge fight, and while the Palace was still reeling from the blow, the Fire Nation struck. Rumor claims that the leader of the Fire Nation coup is Zuko's sister, but Yue could have sworn Azula was dead, drowned by Zuko in her failed attack. Whatever happened, everyone agrees that the Avatar is dead, but some of his party escaped, possibly including Zuko. If Zuko is alive, Yue has hope that Aang might be alive, too. The Spirit Water from the oasis may have saved the world. She makes a note to tell Father later.

What surprises her, surprises everyone, really, is that there's no evidence Ba Sing Se has actually been turned over to the Fire Nation. The scattered reports claim there's a good deal of confusion on that. Every place the _Twilight Lotus_ stopped apparently gave conflicting reports.

It's General Sako herself who solves that mystery as Lo is dragging the food out at nearly midnight.

“This war just sprouted at least two more sides, Chief Arnook. The Fire Princess is refusing to give Ba Sing Se to her father, and the White Lotus is starting to move. Even with the Avatar gone, we might have a chance at winning this thing, but you're not going to like who we have to work with to do it.”

+

Sokka has a hard time getting by without a schedule. This is not to say that he necessarily always _follows_ the schedules he makes, but the itching need to find maps and make plans seizes him by the throat on days like this. Zuko looks through their limited supplies for the fifth time and sighs. “I don't even have my Blue Spirit mask anymore. Disguises are going to be almost impossible here.”

Sokka, meanwhile, gives the third page of his shopping list to Smellerbee (who is the most beautiful person Sokka has ever met in his entire life, bar absolutely no one: she understands about lists and schedules and plans and how they help so much). She accepts the page and holds out a hand to stop him in mid-instruction. “Sokka, I can handle this.”

“That's... not something I'm used to,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “I know. The next best person for plans has been _Zuko_ until I came along, and no offense, but your boyfriend can't plan his way out of a wheat field in the winter.”

Sokka blinks. “I'm sorry, I don't...”

Smellerbee sighs. “South Pole. Right. Wheat only ever gets about as tall as Aang, and it all gets harvested in the fall, so a wheat field in winter is a patch of bare dirt.”

“Ah.” Sokka considers this, adds it to what he knows about agriculture already, and still can't quite convince himself that regular access to bread is actually worth this much trouble. “I think you just horribly insulted my fiance, but it was accurate, so I have to let it slide.”

“Hey!” Zuko calls out. He turns back to Aang and sighs. “You're sure you won't let yourself get caught as a truant?”

“I promise, Sifu—” 

“Yes or no, Aang,” Zuko says. “We can still go back and get different clothes.”

Aang blushes, and Sokka sighs. He seemed so happy with the clothes he picked out until Zuko told him it was a school uniform. Sokka takes a deep breath. “Aang, you're not going into town like that. Toph, Smellerbee, you'll have to go pick up clothes for Aang. Get a couple of outfits for all of us.” 

“I'll pick them out!” Toph exclaims brightly. She's been on a blind-joke kick for a couple of days, largely because long periods spent on Appa bring that out in her.

“That might be kinda fun,” Aang says, because he is _an unruly, disobedient enabler._

When Toph and Smellerbee finally depart, Katara slips into their little cave hideout to start making it into a decent living space. “We can't stay here for very long,” she says.

Sokka shakes his head. “We can't. But we still need to plan, and there might be a better place to stay nearby that we can find by staying here and looking for it.”

“I don't see why we can't just all go to Makapu Village. If Aunt Wu invited Zuko there, she probably would have been fine with the rest of us going, too.”

“If it wasn't a trap before, it might be now,” Zuko says, leading Appa into the cave while Momo climbs on his head. “The Fire Nation hadn't touched Makapu because it was out of the way and Ba Sing Se was a much bigger target. Now that Ba Sing Se is... in my sister's hands...” he shakes his head in disgust, “either side might go there. And Azula might know I was invited. I'm not even sure if _I_ should go anymore.”

Sokka massages his face, anxiously probing the line of his jaw as he ponders that thought. “It sounded like she had something to show you. That wasn't just a polite invitation.”

“I thought you didn't believe in her predictions,” Katara says smugly.

“I don't,” Sokka objects. “But we did save her village, so she might try to pass along important things to us.” He shakes his head. “I don't know. I'm not saying we should definitely go see her, but we should keep it in mind.”

“I'd like to go back,” Aang says. “I bet Toph and Smellerbee would get really interesting fortunes.”

“You won't even get to hear them!” Katara objects.

“But they might tell us about it, and it would be a cool experience for them.”

Sokka looks at their absolute dearth of proper maps. The best one is a topographical map from Wan Shi Tong's library that's so old it's missing five entire small islands.

"I'll keep that in mind, Aang."


	5. Chapter 5

The thing about the Fire Nation is that it's one of the most profoundly sucktacular places Smellerbee has ever been. If she weren't here with her soulmate (and how fucking weird is that?), the whole thing would be a total bust. She does well with humidity, and mostly okay with heat, but this tropical-heat-in-direct-sunlight thing is just fucking awful.

“You don't complain about the sun like other people do,” Toph says as they get into the town. “But it feels like it's probably really bright out.”

“It is,” Smellerbee says. “I've got a hat, though.”

“Well, I knew that. Huh. That helps?”

Smellerbee nods. “Yeah. Light... um... it goes in a straight line? So...” she grabs Toph's hand and holds it up over her head, about at the angle up the sun is at. “So if the light starts here, it comes down,” she brings Toph's hand to her hat, “and my hat stops it. All it takes to not be bothered by stuff you know is coming is to think for a few seconds about how to deal with it.”

Toph squeezes Smellerbee's hand gently. “How did you get so good at this stuff?”

“I love Jet like a brother, but also he's very stupid sometimes,” Smellerbee opines. “I'm the one who usually had to deal with details. I guess Longshot is doing that now.” 

Toph nods, then flushes very slightly. “I've been thinking about what you told me on the ship, when we met Hakoda. About... about being confident with who you are.”

“Yeah?” Smellerbee prompts.

Toph squeezes her hand again. “I think you're right, but we're about to go someplace where who we really are could get us killed, and I'm confident, but... I'm worried, too. It's nice to see Aang and Katara finally acting like we're in a war, but they had to literally die to start being more careful, and I don't think either of them would be so careful if getting hurt didn't hurt the other, too.”

“You joined an underground bender fighting tournament when you were ten,” Smellerbee points out.

“And that worked out okay because I'm the best, and also because I treated it like it could kill me. But... I... Promise you won't laugh?”

“I won't laugh unless it's really, really funny,” Smellerbee promises.

Toph groans. “That's the best I'm getting, isn't it?” Smellerbee grins at her. “Jerk. Okay. I kinda have a crush on Sokka, and he's going to get himself killed if he shows his face in public. I've felt those burns. No one could miss that. And him or Zuko could be spotted any time.”

Smellerbee watches the people in the town as they come around a corner in the road. “Aang and Katara can cover up, but those two are going to spend most of their time in caves. Yeah, that's a problem.” She looks over the town itself. The market looks like it's a decent size. There's almost certainly a clothing shop there somewhere, and Toph has plenty of ways to make them money if the last of Zuko's stash runs out. “Sokka and I will work on that. I think I see the clothes shop. Let's go.”

They have to let go of each other's hands, and the man at the shop stares at Toph's face when they come in and opens up with “what's going on with the marks, kids?”

“We're from the Colonies," Smellerbee says. "It's fashionable there. I'm Ty Lee, and this is my stepsister, Zuzu.” Toph _almost_ laughs. “We're kind of on a shopping trip for the whole family. Do you think you could help us with a little fashion advice?”

The man's face brightens, and he takes them happily through his stock. Toph knows her friends better than she lets on: she selects or rejects outfits based on the texture of the fabric, with Aang getting the lightest fabrics, Sokka getting stuff he can fidget with when he's thinking, Katara getting the most breathable clothes, and Zuko getting “literally anything but silk, no, Lee would hate that.”

Zuko's spare funds are considerable, if only because this is one of the few places he's had the opportunity to spend Fire Nation coin since he met the Avatar, but the clothes burn through most of it. Supplies eat up the rest, and they can't get the maps Sokka wants without breaking a few laws, so Smellerbee doesn't even try to buy them. Instead, they head out towards the others, and once they're out of sight of the town, Smellerbee stops them. “Run ahead.”

“You're going to steal stuff, aren't you?” Toph says.

Smellerbee nods. “Yeah.”

“I want to steal stuff,” Toph says.

Smellerbee grins. “You're my backup. If I'm not back an hour after you get there, you tell the others where I went and come get me. Violently. Otherwise, I'm staying behind to... do a little work for our last couple of totally legal purchases.”

“I _am_ the best liar of the group,” Toph says. “Deal. Try not to get caught, but if you do get caught, try to get taken someplace that's fun to break.”

+

Smellerbee doesn't get caught, which is actually a little disappointing. She comes back about half an hour after Toph gets to the cave, and she puts a bundle of papers and something wrapped in cloth down in front of Sokka.

“What's this?” Sokka asks, picking up the cloth. It's fuzzy and ill-defined even with just the papers between it and bare rock. In his hand, it feels more like a cloud to Toph's confused senses. He unwraps it and gasps. “Zuko! Come look!”

Zuko gets up from where he's making some of those fire flake things that he and Sokka go nuts for. His heart speeds up, and he turns generally towards Smellerbee. “You found a Blue Spirit mask! And... is that the Dragon's Attendant?” Sokka is now holding up two objects that might be... sort of face-shaped?

“It doesn't totally solve the going-out-in-public problem, but we got a couple of hoods for you two. And some of the outfits for me, Toph, and Katara came with veils, so if one of you is willing to cross-dress...”

“I happen to know I look great in a dress,” Sokka says.

“Actually, you really do,” Zuko says. “I'm too skinny, so they always make me look like a twig.”

“When did you wear a dress?” Toph asks, because she hasn't witnessed either of these things, and people in dresses are just cool. It's a much more interesting form than pants, sometimes even more interesting than robes. 

“You know how I told you about training with the Kyoshi Warriors?” Sokka says. When Toph nods, he goes on, “They had me put on the uniform, too. Actually, the face paint isn't much different from Water Tribe Warrior paint.” He hands one of the masks to Zuko. “Not sure when Zuko wore a dress, though.”

“Mai and I used to trade clothes sometimes. She likes how pants let her move, but she doesn't like that you can't hide dozens of knives in them. I like how dresses let air flow really well, but... if they don't make me look like I'm being wrapped up to get sold as firewood, I kinda end up getting lost in them.”

“That sounds adorable,” Sokka says, and Toph chuckles because that tone of voice means Sokka's got a mission.

They spend the evening pestering each other. Aang offers some truly baffling opinions on fashion. Toph doesn't understand fashion anyways, since she lacks the one sense everyone seems to rely on the most for it, but Twinkletoes is also an incredibly weird dude, and the Air Nomads apparently did everything in the most dedicatedly monk-ish way they could find, including fashion. Some of the things Aang thinks of as wild departures from establishment, Toph wouldn't even notice, and not because they're about colors (which Toph maintains must take up so much brain space that they're the reason sighted people tend to be dumb and also terrible benders), but because they're about the number of times a shirt is allowed to wrinkle over someone's chest, or which of two identical knots is used. Sometimes, though, he thinks nothing of outfits being completely different from each other: he uses the exact same word for Air Nomad outfits worn by envoys to other nations, making it clear that it's, in his mind, the exact same garment even though every single piece is changed depending on the destination. The others seem to mostly agree with that one, and it takes forty minutes for Toph to understand that he's talking about uniforms and that maybe the clothes he used to wear were also a uniform.

That realization leads her to some depressing conclusions about Aang's culture and the specific ways he's been hurt ~~and maybe some thoughts about being sheltered and isolated and not quite knowing what to expect from the outside world.~~

Before Aang can get too wound up in what he's lost again, Toph interrupts with a question.

“Hey Twinkletoes!”

Aang stops with his hand halfway to Zuko's third batch of fire flakes, his diatribe about Monk Gyatso's favorite sandals dead on his tongue.

“Have you and Katara traded elements yet?”

Everyone turns to look at her, and Toph smiles because staring just doesn't work on her.

Then Katara fires back with “have you and Smellerbee?”

“No, because I see with my bending!” Toph lifts up one foot and wiggles her toes. “Besides, Smellerbee is Earth Kingdom. How do you trade earth for earth?”

“I don't even know how,” Smellerbee says.

Katara grabs Aang's hand and leans in close to him. In what she probably wants to be a voice too quiet for Toph to hear, she says “Do you want to try?”

“Maybe later?” Aang says in a tone that says they probably won't try anytime soon.

Toph dreams about bending things she's never bent and about new senses that she can't conceive, and in the morning, they wake up feeling restless. Smellerbee tends to cocoon Toph completely overnight, and this morning, they don't want to get up, because it's comfortable in Smellerbee's arms. Naturally, they can hear Aang moving around. “What's up, Twinkletoes?”

Toph presses their left hand to the ground to get a better idea of where everyone is. Aang is frozen halfway out of the cave. Zuko is half-awake, probably getting charged up by the sunrise or something. Katara and Sokka are both asleep, and Smellerbee never wakes up until Toph gets up, but then always wakes up the instant she has no one to cuddle. It's one of the cutest things Toph has ever witnessed in their entire life.

Aang's heart is going fast enough that Toph sighs and sits up.

“What's going on?” Smellerbee grumbles.

“Go snuggle the Sugar Queen. I'm gonna hang out with Twinkletoes,” Toph says, and Smellerbee is tired enough to comply, briefly waking Katara to ask if it's okay and obtaining sleepy permission. Toph walks out of the cave with Aang. 

“I'm guessing not so girly today?” Aang says, in lieu of a proper greeting. He's the best, other than Smellerbee, at guessing how Toph is feeling from day to day (curiously, away from the stress of home, Toph sometimes settles on _they_ or _she_ for weeks at a time, as opposed to the constant changes they're used to).

Toph nods, then bends a stone up and at Aang's face.

Aang flinches violently at the unexpected attack, but he also dodges, and then it's _on,_ rock flying back and forth until they manage to trap his feet. Aang settles, bends the rock boots off, and sits down. “Where were you going?” Toph asks. Their sparring has taken them a few minutes walk away from the cave, largely because Toph _totally kicked his ass and controlled the whole entire fight_ like a total badass.

“I... I wanted to go into town and get something nice for Katara,” Aang says.

“With what money? We're broke.”

Aang's face falls. “Yeah. I noticed. I guess I thought I could... work some odd jobs?”

Toph grins. Aang is sitting in the dirt, and that seems like a decent idea, so they plop down next to him, bending a perfect ass-groove into the earth. They're going to leave butt prints all over Ozai's stupid fire nation. Press one into the walls of the Fire Palace. 

“That's not a bad idea, Twinkletoes. I bet we could get more money faster, though.”

Aang relaxes into a happy slouch. “What did you have in mind?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be writing a piece that details Toph and Aang's scams after I finish the main series.

Drop, then leap, left, then right, circle and reverse into the firebender's reach. Fans are your allies, because they can disrupt his bending. Don't block a firebolt, always deflect or counterstrike, and mind your chi: you may not be a bender, but that doesn't mean you don't have chi, so _mind it_ and put it behind your movements when you deflect, because that's how Kyoshi Warriors have survived for centuries. Duck under his reach for the final approach, and come up with a rising strike that puts your dagger up through the bottom of his jaw and into his brain.

Jin doesn't push the blade home. She has to imagine Jee is grateful for this.

“Yes! Jin, that was amazing!” Bon Lin applauds happily and hugs Jin. “You're brilliant!”

“Bet you can't do it to the General, though,” Jee says.

“It would take all of us together to do it to Uncle,” Jin says. “Do you think I'm ready?”

Jee nods. “Between you and the new fighters Jet picked up in the middle ring, those guards won't know what hit them.”

“The idea is that they won't know that anything hit them at all,” Bon Lin points out.

“They won't,” Jin agrees.

A day and a half later, staring down Azula herself, she quietly decides they might have known the strike was coming. The Fire Nation princess is sitting calmly in a chair, holding the papers Jin is supposed to take. Her two enforcers, Mai and Ty Lee, are ready to strike, Mai looming behind her and Ty Lee sitting in the rafters. Jin explodes into motion, and Mai and Ty Lee both lunge. A hail of knives pushes her back away from Azula, because it's one thing to deflect fire, but it's another thing entirely to deflect half a pound of knife. Ty Lee drops behind her, and Jin expected to fight maybe a couple of firebenders at once, if things got bad. She was never counting on this literal worst case scenario. She still blocks a lot of blows, but then Ty Lee hits her left leg and she drops. Mai puts a blade to her throat and hauls her up. 

“You'll never guess how many spies I have in your organization,” Azula says.

Once Jin is able to take time and really look at her, Azula's calm facade is revealed for what it is: a facade. She is visibly struggling against pain. Between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, there are hundreds of effective pain relievers, so Azula is either in such agony that she can feel the pain through the painkillers, or she is off of all but the mildest in order to maintain a clear head. Sweat beads her brow, her hands grip the arms of her chair tightly, and she trembles very slightly.

“I'm not playing guessing games for you,” Jin says. She squeezes her right hand shut. Kyoyo helped her sharpen the nail of her middle finger this morning, and she uses it to cut the heel of her palm. She makes three cuts, then cuts a zigzag. When the wounds appear on Jet's hand, he'll know there are three people here, and one of them is Azula.

What he'll do with that information is... hard to predict.

“I can't let you have these documents, obviously.” Azula says. “But it's your lucky day. You see, I'm delivering my message to you in person. There's two parts to it.” She grabs a sheaf of papers from the desk beside her and tosses them at Jin. Jin lets them hit her chest and scatter to the floor. Azula shrugs. “That's the first part. The second part is this: I could have destroyed your entire rebellion tonight. I could have gone in and killed you all. The reason you're alive is that I want you alive. You'll have to work very carefully to make sure I keep wanting you alive. Ty Lee, knock her out.”

Fingers press into careful points on Jin's neck and shoulders, and when she opens her eyes next, Jet's concerned face is hovering over her. 

“She's coming around,” Jet says.

“I think I have these in order,” Suki replies. Jin turns to see Suki reading the papers Azula threw at her.

“Azula's still hurt, badly,” Jin says. “She had me knocked out before she left, but she was in a lot of pain, and she never got up. I think sitting there was all she could manage.”

Suki blinks. “Do you think infection might take care of this for us?”

“She wasn't feverish. If that was going to happen, it would be over by now. It's possible her leg isn't healing right, though.” Jin struggles to recall anything else she noticed. “She just had her enforcer girls, Mai and Ty Lee. That was... more than I could handle.”

“You weren't training to handle them,” Jet says. Suki keep focusing on Azula's message across the room. “You were supposed to get in unnoticed. How did they know we were coming?”

“Azula claimed she has spies in the White Lotus,” Jin says, sitting up. “She claimed she could have chosen to kill all of us tonight, and she said we had to be careful or she'd decide she didn't want us alive anymore. What does she want?”

Suki rustles the papers and peers at them. “She says she wants a truce while we deal with Ozai.”

+

“So, in summary, it could have gone better, but now we have ten times as much money as before we bought all the supplies.”

Sokka and Zuko are both doing their judgment stare, which makes Aang nervous. 

“I trust you two to just... go practice earthbending,” Zuko says. “I let you go even though Toph's noisy delinquent ass wakes me up from a really nice dream about Sokka and The Boulder,” Sokka makes an interested noise, “and you repay my trust by going _missing_ for two days and getting dragged into a Fire Nation school that I _specifically said we should avoid!”_

“Aang, I'm disappointed in you,” Sokka scolds. Hm. That hurts more than Zuko. One of the burns on Sokka's right side is a longish line just above his eyebrow. On Zuko's taller face, it doesn't have the same impact, but when Sokka scowls, it looks like a second angry eyebrow. Aang stares at the burn. “Poor Katara was so worried!”

“I sent that message, though!” Aang says.

“You mean Toph bent a little note into the wall in the middle of the night while we were all looking for you,” Smellerbee says.

“That _was_ Aang's idea,” Toph says. “And I couldn't have done it without him. And it stopped you from getting caught by those guardsmen and truant officers who were looking for us.”

“I'm sorry, though. I should have stopped them,” Aang says.

“You know, I get that you're the Avatar and all, but I'm not actually convinced you could stop Toph if they don't want to be stopped, so... I'm not gonna blame you for that part,” Sokka says. Well, that's a relief. That means Aang is pretty much off—“but you absolutely should have come back to get the rest of us instead of just going along to help them with a _crime spree.”_

Oh.

Okay.

“I'm sorry, Sokka,” Aang says again.

Sokka shakes his head. “Just... go to your sleeping bag while I figure out what to do about this.”

And then Toph says “what do we do about the dance Aang wanted to have for them?”

Toph. Toph, _why?_

“What. Dance.” Zuko says.

Okay, so the responsible, wise, Avatarish thing to do here would be for Aang to explain himself, right? He starts towards his sleeping bag, making a show of yawning loudly.

“Aang, what did you do?” Sokka asks.

“Well...” Aang looks up at the ceiling. “It turns out dancing is forbidden in this school.”

“Aang, dancing is forbidden at all schools,” Zuko says.

“Wait, the Fire Nation doesn't let kids dance?” Katara says, which is _exactly what Aang said when he found out._

“Other cultures let kids dance?” Zuko frowns. “That doesn't sound right.”

“Sparky, the guy who makes the rules thought it was a great idea to scorch your face half off,” Toph says with their usual tact.

“Toph!” Smellerbee scolds through a giggle while Zuko flinches a bit, then does his thinking face.

“You know, I can play the tsungi horn,” Zuko says after a minute.

Aang grins. “Actually, I have a band lined up. They'll be here around sundown.” When Sokka slaps a hand to his own forehead, it occurs to Aang that this is... maybe also something he should have talked to others about first? But it sounded like so much fun at the time, and he kinda figured they'd be out by the time anyone showed up, and now Zuko is pulling Sokka's new pipa out of their bags and this may have all gotten a little out of hand.

“Guys, we are not staying here for this,” Sokka says.

“Oh, come on, Snoozles! We have disguises!” Toph points sort of generally towards Appa. That's not where the bags are, but it gets the point across.

“Actually, this does sound like fun,” Katara says.

“I think you're outvoted, Snoozles,” Smellerbee says.

Zuko hands Sokka his pipa. “Aang's right. Besides, we're Team Avatar. We can get out. We'll make our escape route ahead of time. And it'll only be, like, the third stupidest thing we've done.”

“This does sound way smarter than stealing from Wan Shi Tong's library,” Toph says.

“Or picking a fight with Suki,” Katara adds.

“Or attacking a pirate with a crab-spider leg,” Zuko adds.

“Or being at all fond of Jet,” Sokka admits. “Fine. But we leave before it's over!”


	7. Chapter 7

Toph and Aang bend the inside of the cave into a decent dance floor. Toph turns it into a lesson on making things seem like they were carved out of the rock by hand, which is pretty cool. Once they kick Aang out to work on the finishing details, Aang comes over to sit by Katara. “I hope I didn't scare you too bad,” he says.

Katara squeezes her eyes shut. “You scared me pretty bad, Aang. You can't just disappear like that. The note you had Toph put on the wall helped, but they don't exactly have... neat penmanship. And 'safe, hiding from law, stay inside' is not an encouraging message when your soulmate is missing. I mean, Smellerbee seemed to mostly feel sorry for the law, but she and Toph are... a pair.”

“I'm sorry, Katara,” Aang says.

Katara hugs him. “I got worried because I love you, Aang. I'd love you even if you weren't my soulmate.”

Aang blushes _hard_ as Katara pulls away from the hug. He is easily one of the cutest people Katara has ever met, but he's worn the same few identical outfits since they met, and he's basically always looked like just... the boy in the iceberg. Ever since they woke up a few days ago (has it really only been a few days?), he's in different clothes, and hair really changes the shape of his face, and she _treasures_ the way she recognizes his old look through the new. She'd love him however he styles himself, but...

They almost died together a few weeks ago. If they weren't in the middle of a war... 

Katara takes Aang's hand. He keeps blushing, looking down at the ground and fidgeting with her fingers. 

~~Katara might be a little _in love_ with him.~~

“Katara,” he says. “I... I really...”

“There's people coming,” Toph says.

Everyone jumps up. Zuko and Sokka bury their faces deep in matching hoods, and Katara pulls her headband up and double-checks her sleeves. Everything is in place. The band arrives first, then various kids, anywhere from ten to older than Zuko, start coming in. Music starts, and everyone just sort of stands around, staring.

Naturally, Aang gets up and...

wow.

Katara's seen him airbending, she knows he's absurdly nimble in a fight, but it never occurred to her that he actually knows how to dance. It makes sense. If the Air Nomads were as much fun as everyone says, then of course they would teach kids how to dance, wild and energetic, playfully athletic, ~~like a bird dancing for his mate.~~

Aang pulls girls and boys both out of the crowd, encouraging them into motion. Katara hears scattered cries of “wow, Kuzon!” and “Go, go, go!” and then Toph shoves through the crowd.

“All right, blind girl coming through, let's go, make way!” Toph yells as she pushes onto the dance floor. “I'm taking my turn with my brother because he's the coolest.” She addresses the crowd in general. “That's right, he's the coolest! Get bent, Hide!”

“Hide isn't here,” someone says.

“But...” Toph sighs. “Someone tell him I said to get bent, okay?” She grabs Aang's hand, and leads Aang through some heavily grounded moves that Katara recognizes as modified earthbending katas. 

A girl sits down next to Katara, and bumps her shoulder. “Kuzon sure is something, huh?”

Katara nods. “You have no idea.”

When the band starts up their seventh song, they go for a slow one. Couples form on the dance floor, and Katara catches Sokka and Zuko looking at each other with woe written into their posture. Aang darts over to them and points at the dance floor. Katara follows his fingers, and sees what he sees: several of the dancers are same-sex couples. Sokka and Zuko get up and dance together, keeping to a corner of the floor, but Katara smiles at the sight, and then Aang comes to her.

“Sorry,” he says. “Sok—Wang and Lee were scared to—” 

“I saw,” Katara says. She plants a little kiss on Aang's cheek, and he blushes even more. They only get half the song to dance, and Katara is all set to go back to sitting and watching, but then Aang keeps hold of her hand. “Follow my lead,” he says as the next song starts up, a more energetic song, and suddenly, he's... running through katas? They're the airbending forms she's so used to seeing him use, and probably only Smellerbee and Toph couldn't do them by his side at this point. After all, he runs through them most mornings. The feeling of them is incredible, like flying and laughing with him, and they twist back and forth, touching off each other for spins and holding each other's hands to twirl back and forth. A wide clear circle forms around them, and sweat pours down Katara's face, but she could do this forever.

~~Katara has really got to sort her feelings out.~~

+

The fact that it's an Earth Kingdom motmot eagle instead of a Fire Nation messenger hawk would have been reassuring a month ago. Now, Bato watches Hakoda open the bird's message with trepidation. The message is rolled tightly into a little tube, and he unfurls it and frowns. A second message falls out. Hakoda tenses. His eyes scan up and down the first message while he bends down to pick up the second. Apparently, the first is very short. He unrolls the second, and his eyes get very, very wide.

“Chief?” Hik says nervously from behind Bato.

“She's crazy,” Hakoda says.

Uh oh. “Hakoda, what's the message?” Bato asks.

Hakoda takes a deep breath. “Azula, the _Earth Queen,_ wants an alliance with the Water Tribes,” he says through tightly clenched teeth. The paper crumples in his hand. 

“Well, that's not happening,” Tosrom says. Bato turns. Half the crew seems to be behind him. 

“Gentlemen,” Bato says, “I would suggest finding something to do.” He turns back to Hakoda, wrapping his arms around him from behind. “Uncrumple the letter, 'Koda. Let's go to our cabin and talk this out.”

Hakoda leans back against him for a moment, then starts towards the crew quarters, where their cabin is. They meet Pipsqueak and The Duke coming out of the superstructure, and both Freedom Fighters scramble back from Hakoda's thunderous expression. Bato gives them an apologetic smile. 

Fortunately, the way to their cabin is not long. After Hakoda slams the door behind Bato, he yells “What in the _shitkicking moosefuck_ makes that Fire Nation _waste of space_ think we're going to give her the time of day?”

“Hakoda, it's because we have no choice, and neither does she. If she handed Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation, that would be one thing, but with an Earth Kingdom that's more or less totally under her control, we'll destroy each other if we fight.” Bato takes the letter and reads it through. The analysis Azula offers is basically the same as Bato's. Neither the Water Tribes nor the Earth Kingdom can afford anything less than a full alliance with each other right now. The kind of confusion going into the invasion (and she obviously still plans on invading the Fire Nation) without working together would cause is the kind of confusion that destroys armies. “She's right, Hakoda.” For a moment, Hakoda looks ready to breathe fire. “Iroh agrees.”

“How do you know she didn't force him to write that letter?” Hakoda growls.

“Hakoda, you spent weeks on the _Tata-Lee_ with Iroh. Do you really think anyone could ever _force_ that man to do anything?”

“Then he's betraying us,” Hakoda reasons.

Bato looks to the deck below his feet. _La give me strength, my husband is an idiot,_ he thinks but does not say. Instead, he says, “Hakoda, I love you more than life itself, but if you honestly believe that the most principled man you've ever met would betray you, I will tie you to the mast until the fever passes, because you are obviously delirious.”

“This makes no sense!” Hakoda yells, snatching the letter and waving it around. “She's the heir to the throne! She's just trying to make us do her dirty work!”

“You think Iroh doesn't know that?” Bato raises his voice just enough to match Hakoda's. Sometimes, he needs to have sense yelled into him. Bato hates it when he gets like this, but seventeen years with a man will teach you how to work with all of his moods eventually. “What part of 'we have no choice' do you not understand? We know Azula is going to turn on us, and she knows we won't let her stay in Ba Sing Se, but neither side gets to fight _that_ war until we've won _this_ one! You want to kill her? Fine, kill her after we're done using her to take out the bigger threat!”

Hakoda screams, a wordless sound that _has_ to hurt his throat, and he tears the letter into shreds. He storms out of the cabin, yells “out of the way!” in the corridor, and stomps out of Bato's hearing. Bato sighs and leans against the bulkhead. He steps out of the cabin. Hik and Nilom are staring wide-eyed towards the door. ~~They're too young, and they always have been. Too young to see their chief in a killing rage, too young to be at war.~~

“Are we going to make an alliance with the Fire Princess?” Nilom asks.

Bato closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, then out very slow. “Well, Nilom, we need an ally, and right now our options are Ozai or Azula.”

The choice is between Koh and Father Glowworm. The fact seems to register on Hik first, because he drags Nilom back into the bowels of the ship with wide eyes and a disturbed grimace. 

Bato finds Hakoda on the bridge. “She's only fourteen” Hakoda says when Bato comes in. There's no one else up here, meaning Hakoda probably kicked everyone out. 

Bato steps up next to Hakoda, and he leans on his shoulder. “Like Katara,” he says, and Hakoda flinches. “You know where Zuko and Sokka got that scar. You know Ozai burned her, too. I get it. You don't want to be her ally, because then you might pity her.”

Hakoda shudders. “No, Bato. I _already_ pity her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure "get bent" is a much more intense insult in Avatar World.


	8. Chapter 8

Getting out of Ba Sing Se is easier than it should be. A few stolen uniforms are enough to get them onto the ferry taking soldiers to the training ground. Jee blends in perfectly with his officer's bearing and uniform. They didn't even have to steal one for him: he's just wearing his own armor. It occurs to Jet that trusting Jee might not be a great idea, but ~~Uncle~~ Iroh seems like the worst threat right now. Besides, Jee is so outnumbered that if he _does_ try something, he'll be killed before he can do any real damage, and Suki will be taking him with her warriors to the Northern Water Tribe while Jet and Jin go to Makapu Village in hopes of getting in touch with Zuko, Sokka, Toph, and Smellerbee. All of them together? It will never end well. ~~Uncle~~ Iroh was the only thing keeping them together, and he's gone over to Azula.

But...

But Jee was there to see Jet meet his soulmate. Jee fought at Jet's side _so many times_ that the idea of betrayal hurts like a knife to the gut. 

Jet is familiar with armor, and he knows how it breaks. Each flaw magnifies the next, each crack is desperate to expand. 

The scratch, the first flaw, is Zuko. Jet... Jet is in love with Zuko. He has been from that first night, talking on their isolated stretch of walkway about how the Fire Nation had taken everything from them. Zuko's discarded ponytail still wraps around his wrist where he braided it that night, and even if the boy he wears it for isn't dead like he feared, that night is buried under the waters he's seen in nightmares again and again.

And it's a crack in his armor.

~~Uncle~~ Iroh is another, a Fire Nation betrayer. Iroh doesn't want to put Zuko on the throne: he just wants to depose his brother, the competition. He wants someone on the throne who calls him “Uncle” and does what he says.

Jee is an even bigger crack. He doesn't lie to Jet, or use ~~Uncle~~ Iroh's smooth words. He's a man of action, eager to fight, willing and ready (apparently) to share Jet's enemies. He reminds Jet of Tag. 

He reminds Jet of his father.

So as they pull up to the crossroads where they're going to part ways, Jet looks at Jee, and Jee looks at Jet, and for a minute he can't think of anything to say.

“This is the only way, kid,” Jee says. 

Jet looks up at the clear sky overhead. It's an hour or two until noon, and a part of Jet just wants this all to be over, the whole day, the whole march to Makapu, the whole war, the whole fucking cycle of betrayal and hurt, he wants to not be afraid that everyone in the whole world might put a knife in his back.

“I really want you to be right,” Jet admits. “About him. But I'm starting to wonder if... If I'll get there and meet Zuko and have to...”

“I know,” Jee says. “You've got a _destiny,_ Jet. I think you'll come back one day knowing what that destiny is and thinking all this is silly suspicion.”

“I won't,” Jet says. “Even if you're right, this isn't silly. Your people have murdered mine. You've taken everything away from me, and I haven't even been able to trust my own people against you. The only people I know I can trust are Jin and Longshot.”

Jin threads a hand into Jet's hair. 

“I really _want_ to trust you, though,” he admits.

Jee sighs.

Jet takes a deep breath. “I know how you feel about Un... about General Iroh. And... um... even if you're a traitor, I think you're worth more than just wanting something you can never have. Try to find someone who looks at you the same way.”

Jee flinches. “I'll... I'll keep that in mind.”

Suki pokes Jee, and they head off together. She trusts the firebender, but that doesn't mean she won't absolutely destroy him if he turns on her.

“That was really sweet, Jet,” Jin says.

Longshot winks.

Jet waves a finger at him. “Don't you fucking give me that.”

Longshot laughs silently.

Jin takes Jet's hand.

Jet looks around. They're about sixty miles outside of Ba Sing Se, in the north where a forest bleeds into the plains. As they head for the cover of the woods, Jet pulls out one of his swords and swipes at the tall grass to the right. A few stalks fall, and he catches a blade and pinches it between his lips. 

It's time to get back in the fight.

+

Zuko is dripping when he climbs back into the saddle. He is also very satisfied. “I am so glad that worked,” he says.

“I can't believe I let you idiots do that,” Sokka complains good-naturedly. He goes to kiss Zuko, and then he frowns. “You're covered in _clean_ water, right?”

Zuko nods, and accepts his kiss. The heat of firebending rushes back into him and he sighs. “You let us do it because watching me save a town from an oncoming wall of absolute death turns you on.”

“There are _children_ on this sky bison!” Toph scolds before Sokka can reply.

“Toph, you count up your sex jokes at the end of the day and yell 'penis' at the sky if there weren't enough,” Aang says.

“I know,” they reply. “I was talking about you and Momo. You're children.”

Sokka helps Katara into the saddle. “Let's just go before they try to catch the Painted Lady and her two spirit helpers,” 

On that point, Zuko couldn't agree more. Aang pulls off his Appa-fur disguise and Katara starts bending at him and Zuko to get the mud and paint off of them with a quick, watery scrub. Zuko heats himself up to dry off faster.

“So, how much time did we lose?” Katara teases Sokka.

Sokka looks officiously up and to the side. “Too much. We'll never make it to Makapu.”

“We just spent sixty years rescuing that village,” Smellerbee fills in. Zuko tries to hide his laughter behind his hand. The high of a success can be... a little addictive. If this is what winning is like, Zuko would very much like to do it more often. Maybe, instead of the Fire Lord, he can becoming a roving do-gooder.

And maybe the whole world will just fix itself.

It's a career option to keep in mind, in case of miracles.

“It wasn't so bad,” Sokka admits. “We'll be fine.”

“I don't see why we can't just go through the Fire Nation and take down factories instead of running halfway back to Ba Sing Se,” Toph says.

Zuko pats the top of their head. Smellerbee has pulled their hair into a pair of long braids today, and it's a nice look. Sort of ferocious, like a rattlepeacock's warning plumage. He's one of the only people Toph will allow to pat their head, probably because he doesn't do it often. “Because I trust Aunt Wu,” he says. “Obviously, she knows something. I guess it must be important for me to go there.”

“Are you sure she wasn't just being polite?” Toph asks.

Zuko shakes his head. “I don't think so. You don't send a message to the Earth King for someone unless you have a good reason.”

“Or a lonely bear,” Sokka adds.

“Is anyone else still freaked out by the bear?” Toph asks.

“I like animals, but that thing was freaky,” Aang says. “He didn't look real. Give me a platypus bear any day.”

Zuko has to agree there. Aang goes on happily about how he once met a cat (a parrot cat? _No, just a cat, that's the point._ A puffer fish cat? _No, it was just a cat, Sokka._ But are you sure it wasn't a ferret cat?) and it looked really wrong and kinda fake, too. Aang is doing the flying, so Zuko leans against Sokka's side. “You know, going down there to help those people was the right thing to do,” he says.

Sokka laughs. “You remember when I had to convince you to do the right thing by pointing out that it was the only option?” he teases.

That is fair, but also, _hey!_ “Look, if Aang had just let me kidnap him from your village like a nice, cooperative Avatar, I could've gone home, gotten my honor back, and you'd be bringing me cocktails on Ember Island in your skimpy little palace servant outfit.”

“I thought we weren't talking about the skimpy palace servant outfit fantasies in front of Aang,” Sokka says, and dammit, this is why Zuko doesn't do the verbal fencing, because now he's definitely turning bright red.

Toph lights up like this concept is the best gift they've ever been given.

“There is no palace servant fantasy,” Zuko objects, and he's not _lying_ dammit, but Toph can't tell without their feet on the ground, and the laughter has already begun.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like we'll be getting this fic to about 24 chapters total. 
> 
> Also: We've got a pretty heavy chapter coming up. Intense discussions of genocide, variously vivid depictions of assault related to said genocide, and a full-blown PTSD flashback.

Longhot's throat hurts. This happens any time the weather is dry or he just doesn't get enough to drink. Fortunately, Jet and Jin both know most of his signs, not that Jet ever actually needs them. Still, he sticks to the middle of their group and keeps Jet behind him. It's best to make sure the person who knows all of their signs is the one right behind him.

Especially now that they've started seeing evidence of komodo rhinos. Since the invasion began a century ago, there have been packs of komodo rhinos in the western Earth Kingdom because the Fire Nation are idiots who can't control their beasts of burden or do any kind of responsible wilderness stewardship, but here in the northeast, they're a sure sign that the Fire Nation is here _now,_ since the climate and terrain are awful for them as wild animals.

Even with all of the Freedom Fighters, this might be a problem. Without them, it might be a catastrophe. 

There's a sound somewhere off in the distance, to the left. Longshot turns to look, and Jet clicks his tongue to get Jin's attention. 

Longshot points to a tree and signs “I'm going to climb and look.”

“We'll keep watch down here,” Jet replies silently, and Longshot moves. 

Climbing trees is an old skill, and one he is never, ever going to go out of practice with. He scrambles for handholds and footholds, rushing up the trunk and grabbing even the smallest branches just right to keep climbing. In two minutes, he's above the canopy, looking around. The noise comes again, a little clearer for the height, and this time he can identify it easily. It's the complex wail of a komodo rhino, a hiss that rises to a squeak and fades into a carrying grumble. They're about a mile off, and Longshot can see a thin plume of smoke from a campfire. He smiles and comes back down. As soon as his hands are free, he informs Jet and Jin. “Komodo rhinos to the south of us, but only one campfire. It's a raiding party or scouts. Do we take them out?”

Jet and Jin exchange quick looks, and Jet shrugs. “We'll take a closer look,” Jet says out loud, “but we don't get close until nightfall. If they've got benders, I don't want to pick a fight in the middle of the day.” He grins. “Besides, at night, we might be able to do a little long-ranged payback for the Siege of the North.”

“Just don't get us killed,” Jin says.

They both fall silent again as Longshot takes the lead, and it's only a matter of thirty minutes to get them into a position where they're close enough to spy on the scouts.

Jet almost ruins it when scraps of song drift away from the Fire Nation camp to them, because they would both know that song anywhere. That song is _The Phoenix King._

The lyrics are clear enough: glory to the Fire Lord, glory to the Fire Nation, burn your enemies to ashes, find glory when you die, become immortal by killing lots of innocents. It's one of the more obnoxiously patriotic songs the Fire Nation sings.

It's the song the Fire Nation raiders who attacked their village nine years ago sang while they burned Longshot's home to the ground, and it's the same voices lifting up the song.

These are the Rough Rhinos.

Longshot whirls to stop Jet, and sure enough, he's halfway out of his hiding place, swords half drawn. He sees Longshot step out in front of him and he hurries back. It's a good thing they're hiding far enough back that the trees screen them even out of cover. Longshot points to Jin's spot and they converge there. Jet is already signing angrily when they arrive, “It's the shit piles who burned down our village.”

“Are you sure?” Jin asks, her movements careful enough to lack any kind of tone.

Jet nods. “They're singing the same song they did then,” Longshot explains while his friend fumes. Jet looks about ready to firebend.

Jin frowns, biting her lip and staring down at the ground. “What do we do?”

“We see what they're doing, and if we can, we take them down,” Jet replies. “These are the people I swore to kill.”

Well, that answers that. They re-organize their watch, and as night creeps in, they creep closer, high in the trees, and discover, quickly, that the Rough Rhinos are...

Well, they're incredibly boring. They sing (with an annoyingly high level of skill) eight ballads, including a surprisingly suggestive one about Fire Lord Ozai and his (hopefully) fictional habit of sneaking into Ba Sing Se to cuckold noblemen. They also pass around a book, and some clothes that they must have stolen off of a traveler. Once in a while, the komodo rhinos will make noises of displeasure and be yelled at.

Longshot itches to draw his bow and kill these monsters. They're laughing and passing around a bottle and generally celebrating, and he knows, with the same deep certainty as he knows that the sky is blue and that Ba Sing Se is a shitty place nobody likes, that this celebration is just... in between atrocities.

They'll all die some day soon, and if Longshot has his way, he'll be the one to kill them.

And then one of them turns around.

He's bald, except for a ponytail bound up in a complicated, very vertical clip. The fire picks his strong features and fancy facial hair out in flickering relief.

His name is Mongke. He's the man who burned Longshot's home. 

Somewhere, nine years and thousands of miles away, a little boy runs from a village, trying to scream through the flames in his mouth. The man with the angry face laughs at what he's done, and he grabs the boy's mother out of the flames, his fist already alight. He

Longshot slowly relaxes the arrow back. If he looses it, Mongke will die, but then the rest of the Rough Rhinos will kill him, Jet, and Jin.

“So where's the rest of it?” Mongke calls to his men. 

One of the men calls back to him, “North, and then far to the west. Near the Northern Air Temple, of course.”

“Hey, you don't believe this 'Princess Azula killed the Avatar' poppycock, do you?” the Rough Rhino with the bow says.

“Of course not, don't be stupid,” Mongke says.

“Okay,” the archer says. “Just... it'd be a real shame if all this was for nothing.”

“It won't be for nothing,” Mongke says. “That was just propaganda to make her look good. She's a fourteen year old girl! No way she killed the fucking Avatar.”

Okay. This... this is interesting.

They might have to follow these guys for a while yet.

Longshot looks toward Jet. He's barely visible, crouched in a tree about twenty yards away, but he's looking at Longshot.

“Track them,” Longshot signs.

“Track them,” Jet agrees.

The Rough Rhinos have a plan to capture the Avatar.

Jin probably already has half a dozen plans to take down the Rough Rhinos, but Longshot is sure Jet has just as many.

They'll all require arrows in the right places at the right times.

Longshot is going to be very busy sometime soon.

+

Sengge stares up at Monk Dhargye as she drops him off. She doesn't have long left. The burns are too severe, she is bleeding from too many places, her tattoos singed away. Her bison, Chomper, is mortally wounded as well. Sengge wishes he did not know the smell of burned fur as well as he does now.

Monk Dhargye tosses him a bag, and then another and another and a collection of loose bundles. “Find shelter,” she says. “Run. Hide.”

She takes off, and in the distance, up on the mountaintop, the temple burns. It looks like a volcano from here. A massive streamer of flame waves from the peak, a flag of death.

The flag of the Fire Nation.

Sengge picks up the things Monk Dhargye tossed to him. Three bags and six bundles of cloth is a very heavy burden for a twelve year old, and there's no telling how far he'll have to go. A little bit of airbending supports the things into the night, when he he finally stops, sheltering under a huge pine. He doesn't dare to light a fire.

Morning comes, and Sengge looks out of his shelter to stare at the temple. Smoke is still smeared across the sky. It looks like someone got frustrated in the middle of a landscape and swiped a brush full of ink across the canvas.

~~Everyone he knows is up there, and they're all dea~~

Sengge turns away from the smoke ~~and death~~ and keeps walking. The shade of the thickening forest is cool in the early autumn. He used to love coming here with the other kids, collecting black raspberries for fruit pies. The towering pines and the sounds of deer made him feel safe then. There's not much of that going on right now.

The road is about fifty feet off to his right as he travels east. Ba Sing Se might be the place to go, but he doesn't want to stick to the road.

He finds a town by the end of the first day, a little Earth Kingdom village, thrown into sharp contrasts by the evening light. By the time he spots them, his food is running out and his water has been gone for hours. He is soaked in sweat, and he nearly collapses when he stops walking in the village square.

“Hey! Hey, kid!” someone yells. Sengge whirls, startled, but the person approaching him is Earth Kingdom through and through, a man with shaggy brown hair and a bad mustache, wearing green and brown robes. “Hey, are you an Air Nomad?”

Sengge nods. 

The man reaches him and sticks out a hand. “I'm Lee. I'm the foreman of this village. Do you know what happened to the temple? The wise woman says the comet must have lit it on fire, but... we've heard some dark things.”

“The dark things are probably true,” Sengge says. “It was the Fire Nation. They... they used firebending to fly up the mountain, and they attacked us. Their bending was... it was so powerful. There was nothing we could do. They barely got me out in time.” He looks down at Lee's hand. Ever since... _it_ happened a couple of months ago, he's been reluctant to touch other people, but he has little choice. 

Lee shudders. “You're so cold.”

“My soulmate is the Avatar,” Sengge says. “He went missing a couple of months ago, and that same day, I suddenly got cold. The elders don't know why, except that maybe he's someplace cold, too. They made sure to get me out so he wouldn't be... killed... too.”

Lee frowns. “Come to my home. We'll feed you and get you some new clothes. That outfit will get you killed if what you're saying is true. My daughters are all earthbenders. I'll send them to check the temple. If there's anything they can bring...”

“I don't know,” Sengge says. “I'll have to think.”

Lee's husband, Miloh, turns out to be a huge worrier, doting on Sengge the instant he walks in and bringing him cups of water, tea, melon juice, and soup. Their wife, Ono, organizes their daughters, Ohko, Toko, and Yoko, and has the three girls out the door before Sengge has even passed out on the foreman's spare cot in the corner, each of them with orders to watch out for firebenders, count the dead, and bring back anything they can find from a short list Sengge provides.

Ono, Miloh, and Lee all talk in hushed tones after they've gone, and Sengge slowly drifts away into troubled dreams of screaming dragons and roaring flames. Again and again, he watches Monk Dhargye burn, and when he struggles out of the nightmares, Miloh is there, wrapping him up in a tight hug. 

“The girls came back about an hour ago,” he says.

Sengge feels every muscle in his back go tense. “What did they find?”

“They counted one thousand, four hundred and ninety seven dead,” Miloh says. 

A sob bubbles up from Sengge's gut. “There... there were one thousand, five hundred and fifteen of us. A hundred and seven children. They... they...” the enormity of it is thunder in a black night, like a sickness in the infirmary.

“They also brought back a hundred and twelve books, six of the blankets, and... well... maybe you should come look.” Miloh helps Sengge get through a breakfast that tastes like ~~ash~~ paper, and a bath that, though the water is warm, leaves him still icy cold, and takes him into the village square. 

Each of the foreman's daughters has an earthen bin in front of her. Yoko has all the books, and Sengge cries as he reads the titles. There are children's books here, and cookbooks, and books of poetry and song. Monk Jampa's journal, monk Gyatsing's treatise on history, even one of the Water Tribe erotica books Hoshihn always kept under her bed. ~~Was Hoshihn on top of her bed when they found it, burned away like unwanted underbrush?~~

Ohko has a bin full of textiles. The cloth is orange and yellow and white, shot through with blues, greens, reds, and pinks. Here an adult's complete uniform, there a scarf and shawl for the winter months, beneath that a blanket... 

_Monk Dhargye's blanket._ The one she used to wrap him up in when the world was too much. It smells like smoke. Sengge clutches it to his chest and moves on to Toko's bin. Here, there are gliders and necklaces, bison fur hammocks and little statues and rattles for babies and all manner of things that an Air Nomad uses and admires and needs.

Their owners are gone.

“What do we do with them?” Lee asks.

“Hide them,” Sengge says. “And... can I borrow one of your daughters for a while? I... I have a lot of places to go, and a lot of things to do, and I might need an earthbender to help me.”

Lee nods. “We'll sort these things and get them hidden. I'll send you with an escort. I guess... Ba Sing Se is the first place to go, isn't it?”

Probably.

Sengge has heard tales and read stories about people who are tested. People who have steel in their souls and ice in their eyes, drawing on unguessed-at wellsprings of willpower and grit, who bear up under horror and pain to overcome impossible odds.

He's pretty sure he isn't one of those people. He's twelve years old, and he's scared out of his mind, and he's heartsick and lonely and _always, always so cold,_ but maybe the one thing all those steel-and-ice legends have in common isn't that they were great, but that they didn't give up.

Maybe, one day, the Avatar will sweep down on a bison and scoop him up, take him away to make right all this overwhelming _wrong,_ become one of those legends together. Until then...

If the one thing they all have in common is not giving up, that can't be too hard, right? Not giving up is just _not doing a thing,_ it's an _inaction._

Sengge can do nothing. He's twelve years old. Nothing is something he can do really, really well.

The Fire Nation won't know what hit them.

“We'll go to the Eastern Air Temple first,” Sengge says.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azula has a fairly abusive outburst in the chapter. To skip it if that might be triggering for you, skip the paragraph that begins with "Azula flinches," right after "His opinion must not mean very much to you anymore.”

“You know, Azula, you are allowed to take a break.” Iroh sits down with the tray of tea, and Azula stares at him like he's sprouted an extra head.

“Uncle,” she says, “don't patronize me. We both know you'd love to see me fail.”

It's a measure of trust, Iroh knows, that Azula is willing to meet with him in private. He's her uncle, yes, but he's also the Dragon of the West, famously ruthless, famously effective, the man who nearly broke Ba Sing Se. Azula's insistence that he's “too much of a coward” to kill his own niece wouldn't convince Iroh himself if he were one of the guards.

“If you really believed that, you would have killed me by now,” Iroh says. “I don't want to see you fail, although I will admit that you and I have different ideas of what your success might look like.” He pours a cup of red tea for her. She likes the flavor, probably a taste she acquired in Ba Sing Se itself, since the bushes are mostly grown in the farming ring here.

“I could still kill you,” Azula says.

Iroh shrugs. “I am slippery. You would find it very difficult, and killing me would ruin your chances at building an alliance. You already killed the Avatar, and by extension, Chief Hakoda's daughter. It has taken a lot of effort to convince him not to turn all of his efforts to killing you.”

This is... a lie. Iroh dislikes lying to his family, and even more than that, he dislikes how often his family forces him to choose between honesty and the good of the world. Hakoda's coded message _(I found another one of your fucking Pai Sho tiles last week, and Bato insisted that I send it along, so at least use the Bent Tree Gambit to humiliate your niece at a board game if you're going to insist on working with her)_ left Iroh weeping for joy in his chamber three nights ago. Aang is alive. Katara is alive. Iroh has no illusions about the blood on his niece's hands, and one day, should Agni will it, she will answer for that blood, but at least it isn't the blood of _children._ There is more than enough children's blood on the hands of the royal family. 

Azula sips at her tea. Long ago, before Iroh left for war, Ozai taught her to claim she hated tea, just to bother Iroh. He's glad she's outgrown that. “Tell me, Uncle, in a contest between me and Zuzu for the crown, who would you support?”

“The Fire Nation,” Iroh says. “Such a contest has divided our people in the past. It can be very destructive.”

“What about yourself?” Azula says.

Iroh waves a hand dismissively. “I am far too old to take the throne, and too fond of travel and tea. I can only hope that I would be able to help our people to heal after such a contest was decided, and that its outcome would be good for the Fire Nation.”

Azula shakes her head. “Father says you're weak.”

“He also says you are unworthy,” Iroh points out, because Ozai's latest letter did, after all, state as much in between the six different declarations of war. “We both know that isn't true. And besides, you are planning to kill him. His opinion must not mean very much to you anymore.”

Azula flinches, then she stands up. Sparks course around her fingertips, not lightning, but dangerous nonetheless. She's barely upright on her bad leg: the physicians all say that she may never walk normally again. “I will _put him down_ if I have to, but _you_ don't get to judge me, you disgraceful _coward!”_ Her cup goes flying across the room. “Get out!” she yells.

Iroh stares at her, impassive. “You will forgive me for refusing to turn my back on an angry lightning bender,” he says. He fills another cup with the tea Azula prefers and watches her struggle through the anger. 

She keeps it so deep inside. The only thing she lets herself show, all she lets herself feel at all, is cruel amusement and disappointment. When anything else bubbles up to the surface, it explodes like a volcano, throwing bombs and poisoning the air around her. When it happens, she has to fold her rage back down, one step at a time, until it's tucked away again in its corner.

Eventually, she won't be able to keep it there.

She sits back down, like a robe draped on a chair. 

“Fine, Uncle. What's our next step?”

“I would like to send Mai or Ty Lee with a small escort to Makapu Village,” Iroh says. “Zuko will be there soon, if he has listened to Wu's summons. He and Sokka will have to work together on the Day of Black Sun, and they will have to know the battle plan.”

“Fine,” Azula says. “Ty Lee. I'm keeping Mai here. Draw up a plan with the generals and have it here by this time tomorrow.” She picks up her new cup of tea.

+

Suki looks out over the northern ocean. At this time of year, it isn't locked in the ice. It's just really fucking cold. The ship they're meeting is down at the base of the cliffs, but the drop down would be fatal, so they'll have to walk. 

It's a Northern Water Tribe ship, made out of a single enormous turtlewhale, the shell serving for a hull. Suki calls out and waves the signal flag, and from the deck below, another flag waves back. She signals their route down, and they head off.

Jee takes the lead. Shi and Imbon chat about what sailing on the ship will be like. They're convinced it will rock and sway more with the waves, which it might. The shell isn't as round as a turtleduck's, since turtlewhales are typically fairly long and narrow, but that doesn't mean it looks entirely stable. They must have a damn good keel.

Suki hurries to the front of their little group, past Kyoyo, to walk next to Jee. It's been a few days since they parted ways with Jet and his crew, and Suki is dying to poke this particular nest of vulture wasps. 

Jee glances at her sidelong. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks him.

“Well, I like it better than the Southern Tribe ships. Big, solid hull.” Jee looks past her at the ocean.

“Yeah,” Suki says, because the _Tata-Lee_ did kinda freak her out a little. It's a good ship, and it's crossed every single ocean more than once, and almost none of the materials used to make it are things that make Suki think about building boats. It makes trust difficult. She smiles at Jee. “But actually, I was talking about what Jet said.”

They pass into some trees that cut off their view of the ship, and Jee frowns at her, then straight ahead. “He'll get over hating all firebenders,” Jee says.

“He doesn't hate Zuko. In much the same way you don't hate Uncle.”

“Nobody hates The General,” Jee says.

 _“Lieutenant_ Jee, you know what I'm talking about,” Suki scolds. “You love him so much, but you just can't listen to his advice about understanding yourself, can you?”

“It's not safe to... in the Fire Navy, men who _prefer men_ tend to have career troubles. It's an easy way to target people.” He sighs. “Sozin's rule is a ridiculous false morality that makes no sense at all, but it's also a useful way to kill careers. That's why he made it in the first place.”

“You've had trouble with it,” Suki guesses.

“Me?” Jee shakes his head. “No. I don't _prefer_ men. I'm... I'm more like Sokka.” He clears his throat, blushing bright, bright red.

“So you have a thing for royalty and people who can kick your ass, and Uncle can kick your ass and he's the former heir to the throne.” Suki shakes her head slowly, clicking her tongue. “Poor Jee. He's a perfect knockout for you.”

“I don't _have_ to get on this boat with you,” Jee points out.

Suki backs off a little. She looks at the trees around them. There's still a little snow under some of them. At this latitude, it never actually goes away. Delicate little blue flowers are starting to come up. She doesn't know what they're called.

“You know Jet was right. I mean, I get it, about Uncle. He's kind of amazing and if I was ancient like you are, I'd be pretty into him.” Suki watches Jee roll his eyes. “I think he's also safe for you. If you're just stuck on him, you don't risk exposing yourself. Nobody has to know about you and nobody can break your heart.” She shrugs. “You don't want what happened to the people who 'have career troubles' to happen to you. But I don't think that's a concern anymore. I mean, if our side wins, Zuko's in charge and he repeals Sozin's rule. If our side loses, they won't ever know about you because you'll die in battle.”

“Are all your pep talks this awful?” Jee asks.

Suki laughs at that. “This isn't a pep talk. I'm just... tired of seeing you waste your love on someone who doesn't feel the same for you. I'm not even telling you to go find a man, or a woman, or neither, or anyone. It's just... he's not gonna think you're disloyal if you change how you feel about him. If you introduced him to your new partner, he'd be happy for you.”

Jee sighs. “I... I actually do know that, Suki. It's just that it's a little hard to see other people that way when he's always there.”

“Maybe spending three years on a ship with him and then pretending to be married in public for a month was a bad move,” Suki says.

Jee shrugs. There's a large branch fallen on the ground in their way, and he bends down to pick it up. Suki helps.

“It got me here,” Jee says. “I follow The General's orders, and that's always taken me to the right places. Even at Ba Sing Se. The first time, I mean.” He puts his back into pushing the branch away, and it finally gives, crashing into the foliage off to the side. Sohi and Kyoyo both start applauding. Suki and Jee throw rude gestures over their shoulders. “The General's orders were as merciful as they could be. He used to say 'a master of war conquers with a delicate touch instead of a ruthless hammerblow.' It's why he was sent to Ba Sing Se instead of Ozai. Azulon thought he'd be better suited to taking it.” 

“But now he's ordered you away,” Suki says.

“In case you haven't noticed, we're escorting nobility. Kyoyo, Kuei, the intolerably smug ones we picked up in that last town. This is an important mission. I haven't been ordered away, I've been trusted.”

“You'd be a colonel by now if he had his way,” Suki confirms. 

Jee grins. “I'd be a general by now. But I think... maybe you're right. It's hard to make your own flame when you're standing in someone's shadow. Spending time apart might be good for me.”

When they emerge onto the beach near the base of the cliffs a few minutes later, there's a line of Water Tribe warriors waiting for them. With them is a girl, perhaps sixteen years old, with white hair piled high on her head, wearing a cloak fastened with a royal flame broach. A betrothal necklace sits at her throat, and a bright smile graces her face.

~~Sokka is _stupid_ lucky.~~

Princess Yue gestures them towards the ship. “Come aboard. It's good to see you, Lieutenant Jee!”

Jee hugs her, and Suki supervises the loading of five Kyoshi Warriors, three dukes, five marquesses, a king, and a bear. She ~~carefully~~ ends up next to Yue, who leans over at the sight of Bosco. “What is that?”

“That's King Kuei's bear,” Suki answers.

“What's wrong with it?” Yue asks.

“Nothing, he's just a bear.”

“But... why does he look like that?”

“Because he's just a bear.” Suki watches Bosco and Kuei heading up the boarding ramp. “He's _just_ a bear. Weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life.” She shrugs. “He killed three Dai Li for me, though. Me and Bosco are good.”

For a moment, Yue looks horrified, then a nervous giggle escapes from her, and _shit_ but that's cute. This girl is _catastrophically_ attractive. Suki and Yue board the ship— _Frostbite,_ Suki reads off the prow—ahead of about half the warriors. “We have orders,” Yue says. “And I have news. Hakoda's put the Bent Tree back into play. Aang is alive.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very tired so I didn't proofread before posting. 
> 
> Content warning: the second section is a full-scale skirmish, so be watchful for moderate to severe violence and harm to both people and animals, some of which is pretty brutal.

The landscape around Makapu Village is permanently changed in ways Sokka didn't quite expect. Under the shadow of their big rock wall, things are already starting to die off. Fire breaks have been cut into the trees not far from the village, and much of what was outside the wall is burned away. It does help them with scouting, though. They quickly determine that there are no Fire Nation soldiers here, but they still have Aang and Katara hide while he and Toph head into the village. They're going to know they've come from the sky bison, but not that Aang is alive. Zuko and Katara, meanwhile, are ready to heal any wounds, and they've already set up a signal system. A painful signal system, but it's better than carving whole words into his arm.

Aunt Wu herself meets them halfway up to her house. “I'm so glad you're here,” she says. She grips Sokka's hand, and presses something into it. He surreptitiously looks at it. A Bent Tree tile. Uncle knows that Aang is alive, which means Dad got in touch with Uncle, but Aang's survival is still privileged information, or she'd be telling them openly. The situation must be complicated.

“Who's here from the White Lotus?” Sokka asks.

“An old friend of Zuko's, actually. His name is Piandao. I'm afraid the situation has gotten complicated.”

“Where can we land Appa?” Toph asks. Bless her.

“You must be Toph Beifong,” Aunt Wu says.

Toph nods. “Yeah. Or the Blind Bandit. Whichever scares you more.”

Aunt Wu smiles indulgently. She chats with Toph while Sokka tries to recall what Zuko has told him about his old master. Piandao is a skilled swordsman, an artist, and although he's technically a commoner, he apparently lives like a noble. The fact that he's a member of the White Lotus... actually makes a lot of sense, from what Sokka knows. They signal the others to come in, and lead them to an isolated spot behind Aunt Wu's mansion. Sokka barely even notices when Piandao emerges from the house behind them. The man moves so much in harmony with his environment that the door opening barely even registers until Sokka turns to stare. 

Piandao raises an eyebrow. He's a little darker even than Sokka, tall and thin, with precisely-kept hair and a perfect beard and clothes as sharp and flawless as a masterpiece dagger. He waves a hand towards the landing sky bison, but Sokka has seen it before. He doesn't have that same slightly-giddy Appa-can-fly reaction that most people get, so he crosses the distance to Piandao instead. 

“Hello Sokka,” Piandao says. “Grand Lotus Iroh thinks very highly of you, you know.”

Sokka blinks. It's not as though he's surprised Piandao knows who he is. If he's a member of the White Lotus, and a prominent Fire Nation citizen, then of course he's going to see the scars, recognize their significance, and add it all together. 

It's just surprising to be allowed to dispense with the formalities.

“Master Piandao,” Sokka says. “Zuko's told me about you. I hear I have you to blame for the long scar on my thigh.”

Piandao smiles. “I'm sorry about that.”

Sokka shrugs. “I'm just glad it was after I knew about soulmates. It was the first time we were sure I had one, you know. I would have been terrified if I hadn't figured it out.”

Piandao grins. “I'm the one who told Iroh that Zuko's fingers had fishhook scars. I realized you must be Water Tribe first.”

Sokka laughs. “I wonder how much of his mystery wisdom is just getting a bunch of people to tell him stuff.”

“That's half of wisdom by itself,” Piandao says. The others arrive, and they quickly rush inside. Meng is just finishing setting the table. She sees Aang, blushes fiercely, and hurries out of the room. They all sit down together, and Sokka looks at the dishes set out for them. There are vegetarian foods for Aang, and stewed sea prunes, and... 

“Is that fire flake crusted steak?” Sokka asks.

“Yes,” Piandao says. “It's one of my favorites.”

“Yes,” Sokka and Zuko say at the same time, and they reach together for the dish.

It's a happy, boisterous meal. Meng even joins them after feeding Appa. She alternates between staring and pointedly looking away from Aang. It's only after she leaves, when they're all sitting around and snacking on desserts, that Piandao starts talking about serious matters. 

“Prince Zuko,” he says, “your sister has made her move. She's officially at war with the Fire Nation. She's offered an alliance to the Water Tribes and the White Lotus, and she's throwing her support behind your bid for the throne in exchange for being allowed to keep the throne of Ba Sing Se. The Water Tribes have agreed to her terms.”

“There's a catch here,” Zuko says.

“Exactly. The White Lotus is allied with the legitimate kings of the Earth Kingdom.”

“You're going to send us to take her down,” Sokka says.

Piandao shakes his head. “No. The White Lotus will take care of her.”

Sokka can see the moment Zuko understands. He _flinches_ at the thought of what they're going to do to his sister.

“Please don't,” Sokka says. “Master Piandao, she's _fourteen!”_

“Her own uncle will be one of the people assigned to take her down,” Piandao reassures him. “They're going to try to take her alive, but if they can't, they'll be merciful.”

Zuko breathes a little easier next to Sokka. “What about the invasion?” Sokka asks. 

Piandao smiles. “We're going to go with your original plan. A concentrated strike. We'll seize the capital, paralyze the enemy, and now, we'll catch them completely off guard with the Avatar. That's something we're going to need. They know about the eclipse.”

Sokka's stomach drops. 

His plan is resilient. Usually, when he has a plan, it has to be thrown together quickly, and it all falls apart if something goes wrong, but this time, his plan is all cushion. Without Azula's fleet, it would have been beyond difficult for the plan to take something going wrong. With Azula's fleet...

They'll be ready at the Gates of Azulon. They'll be waiting. There will be death, and misery, and it won't be the entire garrison there, they'll leave guards in case the allies try something... well, something just like what they're going to do.

But there will be fallbacks, and guards, and they'll have the Avatar in the middle of their ranks and the Dai Li on their flanks and the legendary prowess of Water Tribe Warriors, and the Kyoshi Warriors, and even some of those guys from the _swamp_ will be there, and they might actually be able to _do this._

But the enemy knows he's coming. They've been planning, too.

This is going to be a fight. A real battle. Not one of the little skirmishes they get into when they meet one of Ozai's patrols. 

This is going to be like the North Pole.

This is going to be a bloodbath.

+

The Rough Rhinos head north and west, which happens to intersect generally with where Jet wants to go anyway. Tailing them involves a lot of effort until Jin finds a farm on the third day and, through a combination of being unfairly cute and openly saying they're out for revenge against the Rough Rhinos, gets three ostrich horses, which are actually faster over long distances than a komodo rhino (people are faster over long distances as well, but not by nearly as much and not while trying to move quietly).

Nightly surveillance tells Jet that the Rough Rhinos are chasing a set of hidden treasures. They've picked things up from four sites already, and they're looking to lure the Avatar in to capture him.

Having met and fought Aang, Jet is aware that this is a terrible idea. Of course, none of that matters, since nobody survives what Azula did to Aang. If they lure anyone in, it's going to be _Zuko,_ and Sokka, and maybe Toph and Smellerbee. None of these are people Jet is comfortable losing, but there are five Rough Rhinos and only three Freedom Fighters, and the odds for that fight are... not something Jet wants to think about.

And they keep a guard at night. Usually the archer (Vachir, apparently) in the first half of the night and Mongke himself in the second half.

So they follow the Rough Rhinos. 

The fact is, Jet is sure Longshot could pick at least two of them off before they have a chance to respond, but once they do respond, things could get very ugly very quickly. These men are armed to the teeth, dangerous beyond belief, and absolutely ready to...

~~Well, look what they did to Longshot.~~

The first time Jet spots a town in the distance, he's terrified that they're about to witness a repeat of what happened to his home. They don't. The Rough Rhinos pass it by completely. 

It's the fifth town that they turn towards. The place is nestled into the fringes of the forest, behind a stand of trees gone hoary with thick, pale mosses. By everything that Mongke has said to his underlings, this is the second to last place they have to go. It has a wall, but in this climate, a wall is more to keep out animals and wind than invaders. One of the men, the guy whose name Jet doesn't know yet, tosses a bomb at the wall, and the blast ~~reminds Jet of the dam by Gaipan.~~

Longshot leans in his saddle to clap a hand to Jet's shoulder. Did he really flinch that hard?

Jin brings her mount up next to Jet. “Do we stop them?”

Jet nods as the Rough Rhinos charge through the gap in the wall. “Longshot, get to the trees. Hit the archer first. Jin... go after the colonel. You're my Kyoshi Warrior, you can _absolutely_ kick his ass. I'll handle explosives guy.”

Longshot kicks his mount's side and goes tearing across the open ground between them and the trees. Jet and Jin thunder after the Rhinos. 

The screaming has started. Blasts of flame, stones thrown up from under the earth, and the rattle of weapon on weapon tell a tale of resistance, but this is no military target, and it won't last long. Jin pulls out in front of Jet, leaning to throw a knife before she draws out the spare fans Sohi gave her and plants her feet firmly in her stirrups to go in for the attack. 

Jet almost forgets to draw his swords because _holy fucking shit_ that was incredible. The shuang gou come clear, just as an arrow streaks over the wall and lands in the archer's shoulder. Longshot's swift quiver is at work as he delivers a second arrow between the man's shoulder blades, and by the time Jet reaches his target, a third arrow has unseated the archer.

Sometimes, at the start of a big fight, before he learned better tactics, Jet used to yell “freedom” at the top of his lungs. He so badly wants to scream “revenge,” but no words come out, just an inarticulate shriek of hatred as he hooks the end of his right blade around the bombardier's left hand, interrupting the toss of a bomb at a house. 

The explosive drops, already lit, to the ground.

Jet has a bare moment to contemplate his course. His blade is stuck in deep, and if he keeps his hold, he'll leave the saddle. It's not much of a choice. He lets go and the ostrich horse keeps going, away from the Rough Rhino who is now spurring his own mount away from the explosion. Jet launches himself off his ostrich horse a moment before the bomb goes off.

Someone who has just dropped a bomb has a great motivation to put things between himself and the explosion, especially if he's carrying more explosives. In the case of Mongke's underling, that ends up being his komodo rhino. The beast isn't wounded. It cries out once and never makes another sound again, its bottom half instantly transformed into a pulverized mess of gore attached to maybe two thirds of an animal and a shellshocked rider. Jet's own ostrich horse fares better, but clearly won't ever get up again. Jet rolls and stands up, and then a chain slams into him from behind and a pair of heavy weights crash into his chest.

He's wearing armor. His armor dents in, smacking into him and making it hard to breathe.

Jet drops. A burn erupts across the side of his head, then another on his right shoulder. Jin must be having trouble. 

Jet picks a direction to roll and is delighted when it turns out to be the right way to avoid being trampled by a komodo rhino. One end of the bolas that hit him falls away and he gets to his feet. 

A komodo rhino weighs almost three tons, and as Jet evaluates his opponent, all three of those tons are staring him down, pawing at the ground. The rider is Ogodei, a notoriously cruel man who swings a chain over his head. Jet lifts his remaining blade. 

Ogodei's chain lengthens in his hand as he feeds more links into its arc. He charges. Jet swipes at the chain, pulling hard, and it's enough to kill the man's momentum, but now he has the problem of a three ton apex predator that would very much like to kill him and is less than arm length away. He can't drop, and he can't dodge, so he lets go of his second blade and grabs the horn, jumping to climb onto the beast's snout. Ogodei yells. Jet's sword is still entangled with his chain, and he can't get the weapon up to speed quickly, so while Jet scrambles up his komodo rhino's head, Ogodei drops his chain and reaches for a sword.

Jet tackles him, and they both drop from the saddle. Ogodei screams, and they're dragged for a few feet before his foot comes out of the stirrup, his ankle definitely broken. 

For a moment, it's all twisting and scrambling for any advantage. An explosion, all too close, doesn't interrupt, but it does lend urgency to their fight.

Ogodei pulls a knife. 

Another knife sprouts from his shoulder, and he yells.

Jet drives an open palm into the man's face, enough to stun him, then grabs the knife from his shoulder and slams it into his throat.

He disentangles himself from the dead man. He looks around.

The Rough Rhinos are dead on the ground. A shaky teenager stands, still in a bending stance, not far from where he's flattened Mongke with slabs of rock. Jin leans against a hut, clutching her head in one hand and her shoulder in the other. Three arrows stick out of the archer, and the last of the Rhinos has sprouted five from his back. 

Jet's armor is still squeezing him mercilessly, and he unstraps it. He's going to have a serious bruise on his chest, but those bolas might have killed him without the armor. He reaches under his outershirt to pull the armor out and drops it on the ground. The dent is... bad.

Jet crosses the village to his soulmate, and he doesn't ask anything stupid like “how bad is it.” He can feel the pain. It's starting to get really, really bad. He takes Jin's wrists in his and pulls her hands from the wounds. 

“I'm here,” he says.

“You're feeling it, too,” Jin objects.

Jet nods. “I am, but I have to see it. If you need to grab something, grab me. Let me look at those burns.”

Jin nods, and her hands snap to Jet's waist. The touch isn't intimate: it's a deathgrip.

The damage isn't broad. Both burns are from fire whips, intense, but narrow. Jet hisses in redoubled pain as he probes at the wound on Jin's head. He's definitely doing extra damage right now, and they definitely need to get all four wounds cleaned up.

A hand catches his shoulder and he hisses in agony. “Let go!”

He turns. A concerned-looking woman of about sixty is staring at him.

“She's... she's my soulmate. We're both burned.” He looks down at the ground. He's beginning to feel just a little woozy. “Need. Um...” He tries to remember what exactly it is that he needs.

That's going to be more diffi


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This opens up with a pretty frank overview of the damage from last chapter's fight. There is mention of the damage explosives can do to a person's body. To skip it, go directly from "Bring your bird" to "Do you know why"

Okay, so Jet and Jin must have done a synchronized passing out routine in the time between the end of the fight and Longshot's arrival. That's...

From what Suki has told him about how soulmates work, that's not so unusual. Apparently, Sokka and Zuko have done it at least three times in her presence. Frankly, it's kind of a surprise that they both held out against those wounds that well. Jet took a set of war bolas and a komodo rhino charge to the chest, and Jin... well, those weren't exactly _gentle_ burns.

Still, Longshot knows better than to go charging in after a village has been attacked. A man, older, with curly grey hair and high, prominent cheekbones, waves to him. “You can stop right there. Drop the bow and get off the bird.”

Longshot drops to the ground and puts his bow on the little hook made for it on his saddle. It's unstrung anyways. 

“Tell me your business,” the man yells.

Longshot wilts a little. He can talk, but it'll be excruciating. Tracking the man who burned his throat has made the old injury ache, and moving into the chilly north has only made it worse. Shouting to be heard this far away is iffy at the best of times, and it will leave him struggling for breath if he does.

He points to his throat and shakes his head, then opens his mouth, still pointing. “I can't talk,” he mouths, which isn't entirely accurate, but most people can't read lips for shit, so simple is always a better idea. 

“What do you mean you can't talk?” the man says.

Oh good, he understood that.

“Firebender,” Longshot mouths, making an angry face and pantomiming the most stereotypical Fire Nation facial hair he can.

“How does a firebender stop you talking?” the man asks suspiciously.

Longshot mimes a fire going into his mouth. The man pales. “Come on then. Bring your bird.”

Inside of the village, there's devastation. It could be many, many times worse. The villagers are getting the remaining three komodo rhinos under control. One was killed in the bombardier's initial misfire, and Mongke's komodo rhino was taken out by the earthbender just after Jin attacked him. Jet's ostrich horse has finished dying off in a corner, and Jin's is already being soothed by one of the villagers. Longshot's lets out a trilling sound when it spots its friend and Longshot hands it off to a young woman, who smiles at him.

The bombardier's last attack was an even bigger disaster for him than the one he dropped, and what's left of him is scattered around a crater, maybe three yards across and half a yard deep. Five houses have collapsed, and two more are on fire, but those are already being put out. Longshot is surprised to see that one of the villagers is a waterbender. 

“Do you know why?” Longshot mouths, pointing to the nearest convenient Fire Nation corpse.

The old man who's been walking with him grimaces. “We have a guess.”

Eventually, someone gives Longshot a board and some chalk. While he waits for Jet and Jin to come around, he gets a story out of the villagers.

+

The last three years have been... a chore. 

For one thing, Sengge had, until the genocide, not considered what it would take to sneak into the air temples. With Fire Nation patrols all around, it hasn't been easy, and those patrols make him long for a sky bison. 

Without a sky bison, Sengge has been unable to approach Ba Sing Se. The city itself still holds true to its name, but a swarm of firebending soldiers blankets the countryside around it and there is widespread panic. The Fire Nation destroyed the Air Nomads. The Air Nomads are supposed to be unassailable. _Were_ supposed to be unassailable. Right now, no one really trusts in the strength of Ba Sing Se, and even the one time Sengge found a route, the fear of being destroyed for harboring an airbender kept him out.

It's hard not to call them cowards.

It's also hard to hold onto his ideals. As he stops in the tiny northern village, not far from Lee's village where he met Ohko, Toko, and Yoko (Toko has moved to the south, where she found a husband. Yoko was killed near the Eastern Air Temple), Sengge worries, even while Ohko helps the local earthbender hide the latest cache of artifacts. The fact is that pacifism... some days it feels like pacifism is what killed his people as much as the Fire Nation. He knows it is not, but there is a burning rage in him that wants so badly to reject peace that it wails a war song every time he sees a firebender.

That is the road to death.

So Sengge draws the emblem of his people in the dirt with his staff and then he wipes it away, again and again, until Ohko drops a hand to his shoulder. “It's buried,” she says. “They want to celebrate your coming.”

Sengge nods. He levers himself upright with his staff. The burn from that patrol that nearly caught them the other day still stings and pulls, and he limps after Ohko into the village. A couple of children run up to him and start asking for jokes; it's been a very long time since there was an Air Nomad in their remote village, and they're eager to hear from him.

Various adults chivy the children away, and then a girl, about Sengge's own age, hurries up to him from one of the little buildings. Her complexion is darker, her cheekbones higher than the rest of the village. She's from the Northern Water Tribe. A pair of women who look quite a bit like her watch from the same building she left. 

“You're hurt,” the girl says. “I can help. Come sit by the fountain. Is it your leg?”

Sengge nods. “What's your name?” he asks as he lifts his robe to expose the wound.

“Osa,” she says, and she hisses in sympathy. “That looks really painful.” Sengge nods. Osa gestures at the snowy roof of her house, and water leaps from the eaves to her hand. She presses it to Sengge's leg, and icy relief flows through him. “You're very cold,” Osa says.

Sengge nods. “My soulmate... I think he's somewhere very cold. He's... he's the Avatar.”

Osa pulls her water away from him. The scar still tingles a little. Every scar he's gotten since he turned cold still tingles a little. “You're The Nomad,” Osa says, the same way people in plays say “you're a spirit” when the Ocean Spirit or Agni or Koh the Face Stealer reveal their true forms.

“My name is Sengge,” he tells her.

“I have a doll of you,” Osa says. “Auntie picked it up from a Beifong Trader last year.” She studies his face, his clothes, the things he carries. “I think I like the real you better.” She stands up, and he stands up, too. 

When they get to the village hall, the village headwoman, a pompous, sixtyish lady in a truly excellent hat, greets them with much more officiousness than being headwoman over only fifty people really merits.

There are foods from all over the Earth Kingdom, and even some of those delicious sea prune things the Water Tribes make. Someone makes fire flakes, which are spiced exactly right and treated very much like an exotic delicacy. Sengge tells the gathered villagers about how fire flakes are part of the most romantic scene in _Love Amongst the Dragons,_ and about what the walls of Ba Sing Se look like from above, and about the tale of the wild love of Avatar Kuruk, and about a million jokes he's heard in his travels, but before it's time for the children to go to bed, he turns somber.

He tells them about the halls of the Northern Air Temple, and how they used to ring with laughter and song. He tells them about learning airball from Monk Dhargye. He tells them why there is no more laughter and song, no more airball or Monk Dhargye.

He tells them his plan.

“There's only one of me. And I'm not even fully trained. I'm just... just a kid. But I've been going from Temple to Temple, and finding anywhere that Air Nomads have left bits of themselves, and I've collected... a lot. I can't get to the Western Air Temple. The Fire Nation is guarding it. But you're helping me by letting me bury some of what's left here.”

“Why us?” the headwoman asks.

“I've heard of this place. I've been looking for towns and villages that have always had at least one earthbender. As deep as we're sinking these artifacts, we need earthbenders to teach each other where they are and how to bring them up. The Fire Nation is trying to destroy the remains of my culture, and I won't let them do it. I'm going to stay for a while and help you, but I want something in return. I want you to pass down the importance of this visit. One day, your village is going to be part of the key to remembering who the Air Nomads were. Maybe, if we're all very lucky, you'll help us rebuild ourselves.” Sengge leans back. He looks at the thatch overhead. “There's so much that's never going to come back, but see... I'm lazy. Giving up sounds like too much work, so I'm not gonna do it.”

There are a few laughs at that. Sengge leans forward again and takes another sea prune. “I don't know where the Avatar is, but I'm still alive, and that means he hasn't given up either. I think probably what's happened to him is weird. Maybe he's in the Spirit World. Maybe it's even weirder than that. For all I know, he's marshaling all the great spirits against the Fire Nation and the ocean will shake off their fleet like roach fleas and Agni and the Earth Child will sweep their armies off of the land.”

“But you don't think so,” Osa's Auntie says.

Sengge shakes his head. “I don't think so,” he confirms. “I think it's more likely that we'll be in this on our own for a long time. Remember, the Avatar is the same age as me, and you wouldn't expect me to save the world without any help, would you?”

“You're saving your own world,” Osa says.

That's true. Some days, Sengge wonders if that's selfish of him.

Ohko says it isn't, but Ohko says a lot of things that Sengge doesn't quite believe. 

They sleep in the village hall, and they stay for a few days, and if Sengge finds a little bit of private time with Osa, nobody begrudges him that. 

By the time he and Ohko are heading back to Lee's village together, the wooden walls of their most recent shelter far behind them, Sengge is in a funk again. He hasn't seen his home since he left it three years ago, and the sight of the vacant Temple atop the mountain is sure to depress him.

The weight of the future presses down on him. He's sure, privately, that he is the last airbender, save for one somewhere nobody can fathom. He doesn't think it's going to be that way forever. There will be more airbenders. Maybe Osa will be the mother of one. Who's to say? Sengge doesn't get much of a voice in the workings of fate on that, but what he does get to control is what those future airbenders have of their past. 

Giving up sounds like a lot of work. After all, most of the work of not giving up is already done now.


	13. Chapter 13

Toph has thought that Aang is ready for a few days. It's not that Twinkletoes can take them on on his own: they learned from the badgermoles, and they're very aware of how much of an advantage that really is. Certainly, with air and water, Aang is more than able to hold his own. Toph has the power, patience, and precision to counter almost all of Aang's strikes, and Aang usually loses. But it isn't about beating Toph. 

They'll work on that.

Unfortunately, convincing Zuko takes work.

“Look, Sparky, I know Uncle was supposed to do it, but he's busy cozying up to your sister, so it's you or it's nobody. We've got, like, two weeks before we have to leave for the Black Cliffs. Twinkletoes needs to learn fire by then.”

“Uncle is not 'cozying up' to Azula,” Zuko objects, which is _so_ not the point. They've been here for about a week, and Aang has made remarkable progress, and Toph needs to hand him off.

Toph sits down in their ass-groove on Zuko's sulking rock. “I know I bond with mild, continuous violence, but your family seems to bond with horrifying betrayals and attempted murder. They're having a blast plotting each other's deaths right now.” Zuko laughs a little. “Anyways, it's time, Sparky. You've got to teach him.”

Zuko sighs. “He's going to hate me.” He taps the left side of his face. “This is what fire is for. Uncle knows how to do all the nice, gentle things with it. I'm just...” He pulls back his left sleeve and presses his wrist into Toph's hand.

The skin there is puckered and wrinkled, not as bad but very much like the scar on his face. Another burn, probably. “"It's a scar," Zuko confirms. "I did this. To Sokka. When you're not careful with fire, you hurt people. Fire doesn't heal, and it isn't gentle, and Aang is so gentle.”

“He understands,” Toph says. They run a hand across the scar. It's more hand-shaped than the one on his face. Their fingers fit into the marks Zuko's fingers left... it must be nearly five months ago now. “Aang knows what we have to do to Ozai. He hates it, but he knows.”

The quiet tick of a drop of water on the ground draws Toph's attention. Zuko is crying. “It shouldn't be us, Toph. He's twelve. You're some kind of murder-spirit, but you're also twelve. I'm the oldest and I'm sixteen. Sixteen!” He sniffles. “You want me to teach him how to kill with fire.”

“He already knows how to kill,” Toph says. “He's already done it.”

“It kills him,” Zuko answers, and yeah, they knew that. “Those men in the fleet that attacked the North Pole. The Fire Sages. The desert. The Dai Li. It kills him every time.”

Toph sighs. “Since we left Gaoling, I've killed thirty six people. I know how many people we've killed put together. Who's killed how many. You'd be surprised how many Sokka's killed. He's dangerous.”

“I know exactly how dangerous he is,” Zuko answers them. “He's my soulmate, remember?” He shakes his head. A couple more tears hit the ground. “But it doesn't hurt him the way it hurts Aang. How can I force him to kill like that?”

“You're not the one forcing him,” Toph says.

The door opens up behind them, and Aunt Wu sweeps out. Toph likes her. People who are hard to read are rare, and Aunt Wu is absolutely an _enigma_ most of the time. Right now, though, she is agitated. “Go and hide the Avatar,” she says. “An envoy from Ba Sing Se is coming.”

Zuko flinches. The boy is about three quarters family issues by weight, between the dead mom and favorite cousin, the turncoat war hero Uncle, and the burning pile of walrus baboon crap that is the rest of his family. An envoy from his sister might just try to kill him, truce or no truce.

He hurries inside. Toph sighs. “I'm never gonna convince him to teach Twinkletoes while Azula's minion is in... huh.” They can feel the coming envoy now, a small retinue of riders on ostrich horses. “They just got around the wall.” Toph wiggles their butt further into their ass-groove. “Might as well sit down. You want me to bend you a throne?”

Aunt Wu chuckles. “No. I'll stand.”

Toph shrugs. Sokka emerges from the house with Smellerbee, and about a minute before the envoy gets to them, Zuko joins Sokka, holding his hand.

The envoy reaches them, and Zuko's heart speeds up. “Ty Lee,” he says, and then the girl jumps to the ground from her ostrich horse and _oh shit, it's the chi-blocker._

“Hi there, Zuko!” Ty Lee comes up and tweaks Zuko's nose. 

“Oh, she's cute when she's not murdering people,” Smellerbee says.

“You say that about me,” Toph says.

“It's true about you, too,” Smellerbee says, as though that's an excuse.

~~For Smellerbee, it's enough excuse.~~

+

Suki is... different.

For one thing, she's even more unwilling to bow to the casual sexism of the crew than General Sako, and General Sako is a full-blown earthbending military prodigy. For another, she speaks fondly about Sokka in a way that reminds Yue very strongly of Zuko and of herself. Suki has also, by the time they round the western tip of the Earth Kingdom, defeated everyone aboard the ship in single combat except for Yue and the two other Water Tribe dignitaries who are going to Makapu Village.

She's also openly flirting with Yue, which is not something any girl has been brave enough to do _ever._ Father doesn't mean to, but he scares off a lot of the people who might otherwise flirt with Yue. Sokka is an exception because he's Sokka and therefore immune to common sense and the notion that life can't be vastly improved with his own intervention. Suki is an exception because Father isn't here.

Yue kinda likes it. 

As their escort ships sweep ahead of them into the Western Wind Strait, Yue stands up on the deck of the _Frostbite_ and watches the turbulent waters, and Suki stands guard. Not that she's in uniform, it's just that generally everything about her always seems to be on guard.

“Do you really think this invasion will work?” Yue asks. The _Wolf Lobster's_ sails are still visible on the horizon, and Yue can't help thinking of how much smaller their ships are than the Fire Nation's. 

Suki sighs. “If everything goes exactly right? Yeah. You're going to be part of what makes this work. I've heard some of what you do for your people from the crew. We need you.” She turns to look out over the ocean. “But it won't be easy. No one has tried this because no one has had this good of an opportunity yet. This is the first eclipse to affect the Fire Nation capital since the war started. They know we're coming, because we would have to be fools not to. But we'd be totally doomed if Azula and Zhao hadn't smashed the Fire Navy to pieces on your city. That was a terrible atrocity, but it's a really good thing it ended the way it did.” She frowns. “I just wish someone besides Aang could have done it. It tears him up, you know.”

“He's a good kid, but he's just a kid,” Yue agrees. “He has so much blood on his hands, and that's not fair.”

Suki shakes her head. “This is going to work, and I'm going to hate it.”

“But you fight so much,” Yue says.

Suki shrugs. “Fighting and war aren't the same thing. Come here, let me show you something.” She stands up straight, settling into a warrior's stance. Yue stands in front of her. “I fight with my chi just like any bender does. Hit me.”

Yue doesn't hesitate to hit Suki. While Yue is a decent enough fighter for a Northern Water Tribe girl, she's still a girl from the Northern Water Tribe, and has therefore been trained only in the most basic of self defense. Suki won't be hurt, so Yue takes a swing, and Suki blocks her with one finger. It feels as solid as a wall. Suki wraps her fingers around Yue's wrist. ~~Can she feel Yue's heart racing?~~

“Try to break that hold. Use everything you've got.” Suki smiles.

Yue does give it an honest try, even though it won't work, since that's obviously the point Suki is making. After a minute, she shrugs.

“I can do all this with chi, but master level techniques like this take really intense focus.” Suki lets go of Yue's wrist. “Fighting can be almost like meditation. A good fight calms me down.”

“This isn't going to be a good fight,” Yue reasons.

“I have no reason to expect it to be anything but a horrible fight,” Suki says. 

Yue rushes forward to hug her. “I wish I could take your place. I wish I could even just be there for you.”

“I know,” Suki says. Her breath tickles in Yue's hair. “I... believe me, Yue, I figured that out a long time ago. You're gonna be _running_ the Fire Nation this time next year, because you are brilliant and brave.” She pulls back from the hug and looks Yue in the eye. ~~Her eyes are _really_ blue, almost waterbender blue.~~ “I wouldn't like you so much if you weren't the kind of person I can fight next to. I wish I could recruit you into the Kyoshi Warriors.”

Yue can't help smiling at the image of herself in full Kyoshi Warrior armor. “I'm going to be a queen. I bet you won't be able to stop me from joining.”

“You're going to go power-mad,” Suki guesses.

Yue grins. “Absolutely. I'll have Sokka and Zuko thrown in prison, and then I'll rule with an iron fist from the Fire Palace.”

Suki laughs as she picks up on the game. “I'll be your loyal enforcer. I'll put down any advisors who caution you to mercy.”

Yue leans against the railing, and Suki moves with her, so that they're shoulder to shoulder, still exchanging playful grins. “My own personal team of gorgeous assassin women. I like this future. I'll send you out as brutal assassins to eliminate my enemies.”

Suki laughs loudly. It's a bright, happy sound, and it makes Yue feel so much like Sokka makes her feel. The flirting has definitely been working. “We Kyoshi Warriors aim to please.” He eyes dart to and from Yue's face, flicking around to the ocean and to her and to the ship's hull, and all over.

They both fall silent.

The sea slips by below, and low clouds roll by overhead, and Yue is too warm and too worried and too overwhelmed. Sometimes, everything since the attack feels like more than she was meant to deal with. She is fighting a war. She was only supposed to be a princess, supposed to bring Hahn to chiefdom, supposed to stay in her icy home, never supposed to leave. Now, she'll be a queen, not over the Water Tribe, but over the Fire Nation. She's spent two months learning everything she can about leading, and about the difference between leading and governing, and it's _all so much,_ like being caught in a whirlpool.

But Suki is pressed up against her shoulder, and if Yue knows anything, it's that Suki is going to come through this, and that's a pretty good reason to hold onto her.

“I think I changed my mind. No assassinations.” Yue watches Suki for her reaction. “I'm going to keep you really close to me.”

Suki blushes. It's satisfying. “How close?” she asks.

Yue closes the distance between them to show her how close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I firmly believe that Suki has got G A M E.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first half of this chapter is pretty much entirely about underage drinking. If that's a trigger for you, skip to the +, and there will be a brief summary of the first half in the end notes.

How close to stand to Azula is a question that occupies much of Mai's attention these days. In the past, she has never thought very much about this: Azula is Azula, and always has been, and it has seemed like a sure bet that she always will be.

This simple statement does quite a lot of heavy lifting. Azula's essence is a fairly tangled knot, although it is a strong one. Her whole identity is still wrapped around her father. Just because she's gone from wanting to please him to wanting to terrify him doesn't mean that his opinion has stopped carrying weight, but it does mean that Azula has unraveled a large part of her relationship with _protocol._

At thirteen, Zuko received permanent disfigurement and an obsolete cruiser. At the same time, Azula received the undivided attention of Firelord Ozai. Whispers and rumors around Caldera City had insisted that Prince Zuko got the better deal, except that, year after year, Azula was... perfect.

Mai is very aware that Azula is not perfect. There are, under the gardens of Mai's home in Caldera City, dozens of burned dresses and melted toys, love letters to people they've never met, books smuggled in from the Earth Kingdom, and other assorted evidence that neither Mai nor Azula is perfect. Seeing Azula be perfect for three years has been not unlike watching a polardog spend three years riding a tiny tricycle.

After so long, Azula revels in broken rules, but she doesn't quite know how to break them anymore.

Hence Mai's dilemma. 

She will stand exactly as close as Azula allows, and Azula used to be a hugger, so in the absence of rules, that used to be very close indeed. In front of the Dai Li, Azula must appear strong and in control. She conceals the fact that she can barely walk by frequently taking Mai's hand when she stands. Mai is much, much stronger than people give her credit for, so few people know that Azula's leg has healed incorrectly. 

Mai and the royal physicians are the only ones who know that it's Azula's fault. That expedition to meet the White Lotus girl personally did too much damage.

The Earth Kingdom nobility has no idea. In front of them, Mai must stand well back. Azula sits through court sessions and parties, strategy meetings and marathons of policy. Mai stands five feet behind her, ready to convey orders that the servants can hear perfectly well without her, because Mai is a threat of force. Azula, in theory, can inflict more damage, but the threat of suddenly sprouting a knife from your throat seems to silence more critics.

With General Iroh, Azula prefers to present an illusion that she is alone. Mai waits out of sight, although she is sure Iroh knows exactly where she is hiding.

But alone?

Well, that's another matter.

Without Ty Lee, their trio feels empty. Azula is the ambition, and Mai is the determination, but Ty Lee is the reason it's fun.

And Azula gets depressed without her, and Mai is _extremely bad_ at cheering up depressed people.

She is aware that no one would be surprised by this confession.

Mai solves this problem by giving servants contradictory orders _(You, spread mud across the floor of the old bear room. I don't want to see you again until it's covered. You, clean the old bear room. Don't let him spread mud there),_ carving rude things into the Earthen Throne, and, on this latest occasion, sneaking four bottles of cooking wine out of the kitchen. Notably, they could have just ordered a servant to bring them wine, but it's very boring to be brought wine, drink according to protocol, and then go have a well-regulated good time.

No thank you.

Therefore, cooking wine.

Of course, now Mai can't remember anything after deciding to go get more wine, and only knows that how close she is supposed to be to Azula is suddenly very important, because Azula...

seems to have fallen asleep on her.

Judging from the boneless numbness of most of Mai's body, Azula has been asleep on top of her for at least a few hours. Mai's head is pounding, and she's more than a little nauseated, so she would much prefer to get out from under Azula's ~~extremely comfortable, huggable~~ body.

Azula is volatile, though. Waking her up with the hangover she is likely to have is a risky endeavor, and there is no telling what her reaction to this kind of closeness will be. Azula was a hugger, once, but that was a very long time ago.

Mai begins to shift, slowly.

“Mai, if you get up, I am going to light you on fire.” 

Ah.

Azula has been awake this whole time. It must be well after sunrise.

“Sorry,” Mai says. “You're a very good blanket,” she adds. 

Fuck.

Why did she say that?

Azula laughs gently. “I'm fit for a queen,” she says. Her voice vibrates against Mai's throat. She nuzzles Mai's side affectionately. 

Mai decides to just enjoy the comfort while it lasts. She's not so nauseated she needs to do something about it, after all. They lie there together until General Iroh comes in with a tray of tea. Azula grumpily removes herself from Mai. 

“I thought, after your midnight snack, you could use some tea,” Iroh says lightly as they get sat up. They're on the big, cushioned couch in Azula's rooms, and Iroh has taken the cushioned stool across from them. 

His tea smells like it might be pain killer tea.

“You know too many things,” Mai says.

Iroh smirks. “There is no such thing as too much knowledge, but thank you for the compliment, even if you did mean it as a threat.”

Overall, it's a fairly pleasant morning. Azula even seems to be in a better mood.

Mai will have to try plying Azula with just the wine, and with just the cuddling, in order to find out if it's the wine, the cuddling, or both that help with the morning.

~~Hopefully, it's the cuddling.~~

+

They're definitely hiding something. For one thing, Aunt Wu (who is totally cool and more willing to talk about auras than anyone Ty Lee has ever met) constantly has her weird little girl assistant watching Ty Lee. This is to be expected.

For another, Zuko has never been this cagey before. He's kind of a terrible liar. Unlike Toph, who appears to be a stone cold badass in literally every way available, which Ty Lee can respect.

“It's not that I'm offended,” Ty Lee says when she brings up this theory to Sokka, who is cute and therefore more suitable to talk to (Ty Lee is a firm believer in having nice things, and if that means a nice conversation with Sokka, then that's what she'll have), “it's just that it makes me a little sad. I mean, it's reasonable not to trust Azula. She's kind of a murderous warlord.”

Sokka stares at her across the table. They're eating lunch together because Sokka's plan pretty much _is_ the invasion plan and as they refine their intelligence, they have to refine the plan, too. Whenever Ty Lee talks to him openly about spy stuff like this, he looks like he's torn between correcting her terrible information security and pushing her for more information. “I noticed. When she murdered my sister.” Sokka takes an extra slice of meat.

“She really only murdered the Avatar that time. Your sister was just—” 

“Ty Lee, you do not want to know what happens if you finish that sentence,” Sokka says.

Sokka has trained with Piandao, Zuko, and the Kyoshi Warriors. Ty Lee very much _does_ want to know what happens if she finishes that sentence, but it's a bad idea to try and find out.

The temptation is still there. Ty Lee resists it and finishes piling her plate with food. “I know you still have the bison, so it isn't that. I'm guessing whatever you're hiding is a plan or a weapon. I mean, it would make sense if you want to depose Azula, and the most sensible time to do it would be during the eclipse, but we'd be stupid to not plan for an attempted coup.” She takes a few bites while she thinks, then lets out the next few pieces of her train of thought. “If you aren't trying to hide an assassination plan, even though you definitely have one, then you might be hiding a diplomatic or economic plan. Ba Sing Se is hard to attack with money, because it's mostly self-sufficient, but diplomacy might be a decent plan. I suppose it could also be as simple as planning to invade the Earth Kingdom when Sozin's Comet comes through. It would be hard to stop you. Of course, we have plans for that, too. I mean, you're the plan guy, right? You know all about having plans for everything.”

“Yes, I do,” Sokka says, and even though he's trying to stay angry, there's a smug smile in there.

This is another part of Ty Lee's certainty that they're hiding something. Sokka doesn't always act like he's in mourning. His aura, and everyone else's, has the greyish tint of mourning, but it's no different than the mourning of anyone else outside the Fire Nation, and anyone in the Fire Nation who is touched by the war. 

~~Entire cultures are in mourning. How could she have missed it?~~

She drops the subject. Sokka won't answer her.

Instead, she plans with the advisors, and she tries not to ogle Sokka too openly in front of Zuko, and she flirts with Smellerbee, who answers her flirtations by flashing a knife.

Mai has really thrown off her ability to tell how hostile knife threats actually are. They _all_ read as flirting to Ty Lee, ever since that time Mai stuck a serving boy with a fork “because he was cute.”

When night falls, Ty Lee climbs out of her window. They're housing her in a little place down the road from Aunt Wu's house. It's both deliberate insult and security measure, and she knows it perfectly well. The most obvious place to put a huge secret is anywhere but Aunt Wu's house. They will know this as well as Ty Lee does, so they might have put it there in order to be unexpected. But if it were meant to be hiding in plain sight, an extra layer of psychological deception might be added by putting Ty Lee in Aunt Wu's house, making her expect it to be somewhere else and therefore not check the house as thoroughly. This might be what they're doing by putting her away from Aunt Wu's house, as well: a calculated move to make her think their secret is at Aunt Wu's house and force her to investigate there to the exclusion of everywhere else.

Of course, anyone who has thought that deeply will have thought of the next level of deception, and the one after that, and so on. There is no way Sokka hasn't thought that deeply about it. Ty Lee can respect that, even if it gives her a massive headache. 

Aunt Wu's house is the largest in the village, though, and that might be a factor. If what they are hiding is a weapon, it may be so large that it can't be held anywhere else. 

The first thing to do is to confirm that it isn't a giant weapon being physically held in the village. If it is, it's no larger than Appa (who is sweet and very cute: she has no idea why she was taught in school that sky bison were vicious beasts), because if it were larger than that, she would have seen it by now. Anything Appa-sized to about ostrich horse sized must be at Aunt Wu's.

Ty Lee starts toward the matriarch's house. Leaping between rooftops isn't as easy here as it is in Ba Sing Se, although the lack of rooftop gardens is helpful. Things are further apart and more slanted, so it takes more effort, instead of being like a quiet evening stroll.

(Okay, so a _quiet_ evening stroll is an enormous undertaking that requires a lot of effort, but people who are not Ty Lee can probably mostly relate to the comparison.)

She reaches Aunt Wu's and flinches when her landing rattles a roof tile slightly. The noise seems deafening in the silence of the night, and Ty Lee darts up to the peak of the roof and over behind the house, and

Oh. _Oh._

This would be what they're hiding. Out behind the house, patting Appa's nose, is _the Avatar,_ alive and well. Ty Lee creeps closer.

“I wish we could just stop sneaking around,” he says. 

The Water Tribe girl, his soulmate, is sitting on the ground near him, leaning against Appa's head.

“I know, Aang,” she says. “I... I don't like it either. I agreed with it before we left the _Foxglove,_ but it just feels worse and worse all the time. I hate being a secret.”

“I know you do,” the Avatar says. He pats Appa's nose and sits next to his soulmate. She squeezes his hand, and he leans his head on her shoulder. “Remember dancing together, in the cave?”

Ty Lee isn't sure why anyone would dance in a cave.

“You mean when you almost got us arrested by the Fire Nation goon squad?” his soulmate (girlfriend?) teases.

Apparently immune to the criticism, Aang replies with an enthusiastic “yeah! I was... that felt good. I was talking to Meng today and she said she wishes she could tell everyone that she knows me and thinks I'm wonderful.”

“You know she's head over heels in love with you, right?” This, the Water Tribe Girl says with a little laugh.

Aang blushes. “Of course I know, Katara. I just...” he sighs. “It feels bad to be a secret.”

“It feels like running away,” Katara says.

Aang picks at the grass in front of him. “I guess you think I'm silly for always having the same problem.”

“No,” Katara says. “I never—well, I think you're silly a lot. But never about that. You're silly about good stuff, like laughing and telling jokes and playing games.”

“I don't always feel silly,” Aang says.

Ty Lee sighs. Not feeling silly is rough. It hurts, to have silliness taken away like that.

Katara turns and nuzzles the top of Aang's head with her nose. “We'll help you to get silly.”

Aang leans back, and Ty Lee leans forward to watch as the Avatar looks his soulmate in the face, and then—

“Hello, Ty Lee,” Zuko says, and Ty Lee flinches _hard,_ twitching and rattling the roof tiles. Aang and Katara leap to their feet below.

Ty Lee starts to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first half, Mai struggles with how close to be to Azula, and we learn that this is partially because Azula fell asleep on her the night before. Azula is still using the painkiller tea because her leg has not healed correctly: she has Mai help her walk from place to place. Her leg has not healed correctly because she is pushing herself too fast for her healing.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished this fic last night. There are, it turns out, 23 chapters total, because I decided one of the chapters would be better as a standalone.

Sokka's boomerang zips past Ty Lee's head. If she were anyone else, Zuko would be irritated that Sokka bothered with a warning shot, but it still has the desired effect. Ty Lee freezes for long enough that Toph and Smellerbee are able to join them on the roof. Moments later, Aang and Katara are there, too. Four benders, one of whom is the Avatar, plus Sokka and Smellerbee, both of whom are slightly more unstoppable than a hurricane, is more than enough to contain even Ty Lee. 

Zuko steps forward. He stops well out of lunging range. “You're going to tell Azula if we let you go,” he says.

Ty Lee swallows. He's seen her frightened before. There was that time when she got caught climbing onto the roof at the Ember Island house. He'd been privately convinced that Father was going to kill her; a son of the Firelord might be able to get away with that, after all.

She's afraid of him right now. She flinches again when Sokka's boomerang flashes past her back to his hand.

“I... could be executed for treason if I don't,” she says.

“Zuko, if we kill her, Azula will break the truce,” Sokka says.

That.. might be true. “Will she?” Zuko asks, glaring at Ty Lee.

Ty Lee nods. “Probably. She doesn't care about much, but you know how she is about me and Mai.”

“She likes her toys,” Zuko says.

“I am _not_ a toy,” Ty Lee snaps. “Azula _needs_ me! She loves me, Zuko! You think it was easy for her, being all alone with Ozai? That man is a maniac! Of course she's a little weird, you would be too, except you got out!”

Zuko almost takes a step back from the tirade, and then almost takes a step forward when he replies “I got out? I got exiled and I almost died, in case you haven't noticed the giant fucking burn on my face!”

Ty Lee nods. “I have, Zuko. Really, I have noticed it.”

“We could kidnap her,” Toph says.

That's... not a terrible idea. Except that the six of them won't be able to hold her forever.

What are the odds they were going to be able to keep Aang's existence from Azula until the invasion, anyway?

“What are the odds we were going to be able to keep Aang's existence from Azula until the invasion, anyway?” Sokka asks. “If we'd have to break the truce to keep this from her, then we have to decide right now what happens to this whole alliance.”

Fuck. Why is Zuko always stuck making huge decisions? Why is he fighting to put himself in a position where that's his entire job?

Being Firelord is going to suck.

“What are our options?” Zuko asks.

“Kill her now,” Smellerbee says. “If Azula breaks the truce, Ozai wins the war. I think she's bluffing.”

“Take her with us,” Aang offers. “That way we don't have to hurt her, but she can't tell Azula.”

“Take the loss,” Sokka says. “Your sister is hardcore crazy, and I can totally see her burning the world because we killed one of her people. Her not knowing about Aang would have been nice, but we don't need it.”

“We need to be sure Ozai doesn't know about us,” Katara says. “Are any of Ty Lee's group going to tell him?”

Zuko tilts his head a little, thinking. “Ty Lee won't. Azula and Mai won't. But Azula will try to capture you. I think... I think I have an idea. Sokka, what if we let her go, but make her promise to only deliver the information in person?”

“Do you trust her?” Sokka asks.

Does he? Zuko looks over Ty Lee. She's a strange girl, but she's always been loyal to Azula. Terrified of her, but loyal.

“I think so,” Zuko says.

Sokka blows out a sigh. “It means showing Azula more tiles than I wanted to. But I don't think we have any other choice. We need to leave tonight, though.”

Zuko looks at Aang. He's going to have to teach him firebending on the fly. It was already going to be hard. Now... “Fine. Everybody pack up. Ty Lee, you heard the conditions. Do you promise?”

Ty Lee frowns. “I promise not to tell anyone but Azula and Mai.”

That will have to be good enough.

“Fine. Go back to your house.”

She heads off. Smellerbee glares after her. “We should have killed her. She was bluffing.”

“It would only cause more problems,” Sokka says.

“How would getting rid of a problem cause more problems?” Smellerbee complains as she goes back to the window she crawled out of to get here.

“Even if she didn't break the truce, Azula would send people to figure out where Ty Lee went. We'd probably end up running from assassins.” Sokka pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is the best option we have, but I really, really hate it.”

“You hate everything” Zuko points out reasonably.

“I don't hate you,” Sokka says. He starts towards the edge of the roof, past Toph (they stick their tongue out at him. He sticks his tongue out at them), waiting behind Aang and Katara to jump down.

“I don't hate you, either, but you can't really count your soulmate as an exception,” Zuko says.

“Watch me,” Sokka says.

They take off before dawn. Smellerbee spots Ty Lee leaving alone on an ostrich horse.

Zuko really, really hopes this is the right decision.

+

Jet is still grumpy from their encounter with Azula's chi-blocker on the road when they get to Makapu Village. The komodo rhinos have helped speed them along, and considering that the Water Tribe representatives will have to round the Western Tip in order to get there, it's enough that they're probably several days ahead of them, instead of being likely to arrive weeks later. Jin has been trying to cheer up her soulmate with the prospect of seeing Smellerbee again, but even a brief, almost-friendly exchange with Ty Lee has thrown him from a bad mood into a worse one.

And then there's their cargo. 

The Rough Rhinos' camp was loaded down with treasure when they found it. Most of it wasn't exactly valuable. There were three rhino-loads of cultural artifacts: books, trinkets, blankets, everyday items both familiar and strange, kept in lightly-bound cedar boxes without locks. Locked into a heavy iron chest, there were more valuable things: gold, silver, exquisite wooden carvings, and beautiful manuscripts. 

The run to a village by the Northern Air Temple had led them to a positively ancient earthbender who claimed to be the daughter of an airbender and his earthbending travel companion. 

Well, she bore no resemblance to Aang, but that means less than nothing.

Now, their four rhinos carry the heavy cargo, and Jin, Jet, and Longshot ride into town on ostrich horses, leading a train of...

A train of what? Aang is gone. There are no more Air Nomads. No one can revive their culture.

They have a museum in tow, a monument to Sozin's monstrosity. A girl comes running up, stiff pigtails adding an exclamation point to every face she makes. “Aunt Wu says to come and join her in her back yard,” she says.

“Who is she to—” 

“Jet, don't,” Jin interrupts.

Jet glares at her, but he sags in the saddle and they all follow the girl with the pigtails to Aunt Wu's house, which is the largest and most ostentatious. Jin would really love to visit an important person in a humble house for once.

Aunt Wu is a woman with large, greying hair. Behind her is an immaculate man with flawless bearing and precise looks.

“Go ahead and tell us what you've brought,” Aunt Wu says.

Jet looks at Longshot, then at Jin as they usher the komodo rhinos into the verdant yards of the house. Jin dismounts and points to the treasure chest. “We have artifacts from the Air Nomads. We came across some Fire Nation raiders who were trying to collect it all to use as bait for the Avatar. But the Avatar is dead, so... I guess that won't be happening.”

Aunt Wu exchanges a smile with her companion. The man steps forward. “You must be Jin. My name is Piandao. I think we have a lot to discuss.” He looks at the komodo rhinos. “Can you boys handle getting those animals unloaded?”

“Of course we can,” Jet says. 

“I'll show you to the animal pens when you're done,” Aunt Wu says as Piandao leads Jin inside. He lights a fire at a stovetop and puts on a pot for tea. He sits, and contemplates her for a minute.

“Sokka and Zuko both spoke highly of you,” he says just as Jin begins to feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “It's interesting that your soulmate is someone they would all hate so much. Actually, the only one who had anything nice to say about Jet at all was the Avatar.”

“When did you speak to them?” Jin asks.

“Two days ago. You just missed them. The Avatar is alive. Zuko was able to use water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole to heal Aang and Katara's wounds after Azula shot Aang with lightning. An impressive feat, I'd say, but then, I don't train just anyone.”

Jin stares. The Avatar is alive? The Avatar is alive! “Where did they go? Why did they leave?”

Piandao grimaces. “From what they told me when they woke me up to say goodbye at an absolutely horrendous hour, the Earth Kingdom envoy Princess Azula sent discovered that the Avatar was alive, and they fled to avoid coming into conflict with Azula before the eclipse.”

Jin absorbs that for a moment. The Avatar is still in danger. Everyone is still in danger.

“We wanted to help. Jet and Longshot wanted to see Smellerbee again.”

“I know.” Piandao watches his teapot. “They will. I'm confident of it.” He smiles. “Their plan is better than they think. Without Azula, it would be too dangerous. The sort of thing I would never order anyone into. With her, they have a chance. A good chance.”

“But what do we do?” Jin asks. “We were going to go with them to the Fire Nation.”

Piandao takes in a deep breath and holds it. He purses his lips and shakes his head just a little. “I don't know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PIANDAO!


	16. Chapter 16

Suki is in love.

This is not a new condition; she has been in love a few times. There was Lenang, and Basha, and of course Sokka, with whom she can only hope she is speeding towards a reunion, and the incredible whirlwind of loving Jin, but Yue is... Yue is different.

Suki is impressed by her intelligence and determination, and blown away by her commitment to ending the war. 

Yue is also a shocking beauty. The girl is _ethereal,_ like a spirit. It helps.

Sokka is probably going to flip his lid, and also he is probably going to say something very... well...

horny.

Zuko will call him an idiot, but by the time they get to the Black Cliffs, Suki will probably be on Sokka's side. 

“I think Zuko will be more on you side for that than you think,” Yue says when Suki brings it up the morning they start gathering their things for the transfer to _Tui's Revenge._ Suki and Jee will be joining a little more than half of _Frostbite's_ warriors aboard the little flotilla of brand new Water Tribe warships, speeding towards a rendezvous with Chief Hakoda's captured Fire Navy ship. Yue will be staying aboard the ponderous turtlewhale-hulled _Frostbite_ in order to continue on to meet with the forward command at Makapu Village. 

“You think so?” Suki asks.

Yue kisses her on the cheek and then whispers an assurance in her ear that has Suki blushing fiercely. “I am surviving this war just for that,” Suki says.

Jee steps up next to her. His old Fire Nation armor is staying in trust with Yue. Jee is decked out in a brand new set of Water Tribe armor, exactly like a waterbender. Whoever ends up facing off against him will be in for a nasty surprise, but that's weeks away.

“Ladies,” Jee says.

“Lieutenant,” Yue says with a giggle in her voice. 

They watch the fleet start moving. There are forty ships here, most of them dwarfed by the _Frostbite._ Each of them will be taking on warriors. As the first one pulls up alongside them, a long plank extends between the two ships, and sailors work to secure the docking, then warriors cross over, carrying supplies and weapons. Kyoyo is with them, her brief time with Sako over now that the general is going to coordinate in Makapu. The whole transfer takes about thirty minutes, and as the first ship is pulling away to port, the second is approaching from starboard.

Suki holds Yue's hand, and from time to time they'll steal a kiss as they watch the transfer. _Tui's Revenge_ is scheduled to be the last ship. It's a deliberate move: keeping Suki's team aboard as long as possible means that the _Frostbite_ has strong protection until the fleet parts ways with her. Even after Suki departs, they'll have benders and warriors. The ship will be far from defenseless.

“Oh,” Jee says about six ships in, and he hurries off. Yue and Suki watch him run up to one of the departing warriors and share a quick but passionate kiss with the man.

Huh.

Good for him.

When Jee comes back, he is bright red. “I took some advice,” he says.

“Are you going to see him again?” Suki asks.

Jee shrugs. “Maybe? It's more of a little... you know, shipboard fling.”

Suki has to fight to keep from cheering but she does it. Yue flashes Jee a bright smile and they keep watching the disembarkation. “So what's his name?” Yue asks.

“Purm,” Jee replies. “Apparently he tries to have a whirlwind affair before every battle. His shipmates say it's good luck.”

“One of Hakoda's men?” Suki asks.

Jee nods. “He was originally on the _Afa.”_

“Hakoda's fleet gave our scouts a scare when they showed up,” Yue says.

It isn't until nearly sunset that _Tui's Revenge_ pulls up next to them, and Jee leads the way onto it. The rest of Suki's team brings up the rear, and Suki stops for one last kiss with Yue before she steps onto the much smaller warship.

They have a little less than a month to get to the Gates of Azulon. It's going to be an interesting journey.

+

Her name is Hayon.

Sengge has seen her from time to time, a woman of about sixty, with hair piled high on top of her head into a graying beehive. She tries her best to be unobtrusive, staying in the corners of taverns and rarely leaving the seedy, unpatrolled limits of Six Piers Burning. 

She is Fire Nation. 

Plenty of people have figured it out. The tailor who lives at the north end of town, the dockmaster by the lighthouse, old Fa Bi who runs Sengge's favorite tavern. None of them particularly care. Six Piers Burning is beloved by pirates, a center of the black market after sixteen years of war. Everyone here is a hustler, a rogue, a shrike rat. 

Except for Sengge and Hayon.

Sengge is the last airbender, the Avatar's soulmate, one of the most wanted human beings in the world.

The only way to find out why Hayon lives in Six Piers Burning is to ask her, so he sits down and slides a glass of plum wine across her table at Fa Bi's tavern. 

“You're younger than the men who usually come on to me, but I suppose you do have a reputation,” she says flatly.

Sengge blinks. “Actually, I'm not here to proposition you.”

“Good,” she says. “You weren't going to get anywhere by trying. What do you want?”

Sengge lifts his hood enough for her to see the tattoo on his forehead. “I want to trade stories.”

She raises an elegant eyebrow. “What makes you think you can trust me?”

“I've fought a few Fire Nation soldiers in the last couple of years. I know how the nobles move. You move like a soldier, and you move like a noble. A Fire Nation noble, with military training, who's been hiding in Six Piers Burning for ten years? If you leave this town, the Fire Nation will kill you, won't they?” He shrugs. “I make a hobby of collecting stories. The more of history I understand, the more I can preserve. You seem like a woman with a story.”

Hayon nods. “Not here,” she says. “My home is on the back road, behind the noodle shop. Knock four times.” As she says it, she taps his leg with her foot three times, and she winks. 

Sengge drinks a glass of wine in peace with her and he leaves to go do his shopping for the day.

Timo and Hako, the girls at the fruit stand, flirt happily, and he flirts happily back. It's always nice to spend an evening with them, drinking and playing board games until they all pass out. The last few years have been nice, a taste of domesticity, but people are starting to piece together who he is, and he'll have to leave soon. Soon, it will be too late to ask Hayon what she knows. He tells the girls he won't be around tonight, and Timo teases him about Homen, the man who grows those big, blue carrotatoes just outside of town.

He will not comment on that matter because it is between him and Homen ~~and that ostrich horse that saw too much that one time in the barn.~~

He picks up his groceries for the next few days, and he puts everything away at home. The excited meowing and squeaks of his pet cat otter, Evisceratrix the Undying (he shouldn't have let Osa's youngest name the cat otter. Osa's youngest isn't even _his_ ), demands a tribute of fish, and he pulls out a treat, which she accepts with all the imperious grace of the true Earth Queen. 

“You're very entitled, you know,” Sengge says.

Evisceratrix the Undying pokes her head into the basket he brought home from the market stalls. Sengge swats her very gently and she backs off.

“Not for cat otters. Well, I mean, the fish is, but not for right now. You get that over the next few days. Now stay back from the stovetop, madam Vissy.” 

He fills his soup pot and throws together a meal while he puts away groceries. Evisceratrix follows him through all the steps of cooking, whining for scraps even though she knows damn well he's making a vegetarian dish. After eating, he pays attention to the demanding little thing for a while, then heads back out, coming to Hayon's door and knocking three times. 

She opens it with a smile. “I figured you were smart enough to understand me.”

“What if I wasn't?” he asks as she lets him in.

“Well then, I would have cooked an idiot. No big loss.” 

The inside of her house is not what the outside suggests. By the location, and the condition outside, it should be dilapidated. Hayon should be living in squalor. Instead, everything is covered in fine silks and deep brown cushions. A permanent incense haze covers up Secret Forest muskweed and a subtler smell that Sengge has come to recognize as firebender. 

“You're a bender.” Sengge takes his hood off. “Me too.

“There aren't supposed to be any more airbenders,” Hayon says. “You must be the Nomad that all the soldiers go crazy over.”

Sengge nods. “I'm... I'm the Avatar's soulmate.”

Hayon gasps. She sits down heavily on a cushioned stool. “He lives, then.”

Sengge nods. “Something strange has happened to him, though. I don't know what it is.”

“Listen to me.” Hayon swallows. “I was once a close friend of Sozin. I would have told you part of this story, but... you need to know it all.”

Well now.

Sengge takes a seat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would die for Evisceratrix the Undying. I would _kill_ for her. ~~Maybe I already have.~~


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy. Okay.  
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> Go into this chapter warned that it is discussing a very broad spectrum of trauma. I don't know how I would even begin to put up specific trigger warnings for all of this, because it hits basically every trauma button the original series does, and it's fairly constant.
> 
> There's extra focus on concepts related to domestic abuse, child abuse, genocide, panic attacks, and anger as a trauma response. 
> 
> If you think one or more of those might be a problem, read with caution and have comfort objects or people ready.
> 
> I will have a summary of the chapter in the end notes for anyone who doesn't want to risk it. If there's a specific trauma in here that you would like to be warned for, let me know what and where it is and I'll add a warning for you.

Roku rolls back his sleeve. 

Aang stares, aghast at the long scar that wraps around his predecessor's right arm. Their surroundings seem at once unreal and far more solid than anything Aang has ever seen before, like the vision of the comet. 

“I don't understand,” Aang says. “Why is it so important how you got the scar?”

Roku smiles. It isn't a happy smile. “It happened the day I met my wife. Watch.”

They are in a garden. The gardens at the Fire Palace, Aang is sure. Nowhere else could be so decadent, so beautiful, and so completely lousy with Fire Nation nobles. Two young boys, seven or eight years old, run across the garden. One of them scrambles up a tree, laughing, and the other follows. There are thorns on the tree's outer branches, but the boys avoid them with practiced ease.

“I was a rambunctious boy,” Roku says. “My best friend was the crown prince, and we had privileges that no one else dreamed of. We were both precocious firebenders, but I never had much focus. Always distracted by other things. Look.” He points. “There she is. Ta Min was four years older than me. I'm about to spot her.”

“Roku!” the boy—the crown prince—in the tree with young Roku calls out, but the young Avatar is staring out of the tree at a girl, about Aang's age, with a soft, gentle face and a sort of sweet prettiness about her. Young Roku is transfixed, and he ignores his friend until the crown prince grabs his foot.

Startled, Young Roku kicks, and dislodges his friend, who loses his grip and falls.

“Sozin!” Young Roku yells, and both boys howl in pain. Sozin ( _that_ Sozin?) lands hard on his back, blood flowing freely from his right arm where the thorns have sliced him open. The young Avatar is cradling an identical wound.

“He was your _soulmate?”_ Aang yells.

“Yes. We were born on the same day, at the same time. We never knew until then. He was... He was my best friend. Our whole lives, I loved him, closer than a brother or a lover.”

Roku takes Aang through the announcement that he is the Avatar, and the way he and Sozin celebrated together. He shows him his training, and Aang struggles to understand. “But Sozin...” Aang says as they watch Roku struggle with waterbending. “Zuko said that Sozin killed you. That he died in combat with you. How could he kill his own soulmate?”

“While I was studying the elements, Sozin's father Zaruna was building a new type of Fire Nation. He wanted more power and wealth, and he had the power to get it. By the time I returned from my training, he had changed. If he was anyone but the crown prince, he would have gone with me. Soulmates should be together once they have found each other, and we had been together for sixteen years before they took us away from one another. To separate us... I can't be sure that it doomed the world, but it may have been what tipped the scales.”

Young Roku's training finishes, and Aang watches him return to the Fire Nation. Sozin looks so much like the portraits Kuzon used to show him, before Aang knew that Sozin died in combat with his predecessor. _The heroic Firelord who died saving his people from a volcano._

The monster who told his son how to wipe out the Air Nomads before he went. That part, Aang knows. 

Young Roku and Sozin argue over the idea of an empire. “It's for the good of all people!” Sozin exclaims. “Surely you can see—” 

“Sozin, please. This is... this is not the way.” Roku shakes his head in time with his younger self as he repeats the words, then he goes on, “If I had only been more stern, forced him from his path... I don't know. This wasn't my last chance.”

Roku, now a man beginning to go grey, walks into a palace hall. It must be the main palace at Caldera City.

“A Fire Nation colony? Sozin, what are you doing?”

Sozin leans back on his throne. “So, my wandering soulmate returns!”

Midle-aged Roku rocks back on his heels. Aang can understand why: Sozin's voice is filled with contempt.

“Do you intend to keep the Avatar all to yourself, Sozin?” Roku asks, continuing across the room. 

You are a citizen of the Fire Nation first, Roku,” Sozin says. “What can you do out there that's more important than what you could be doing here?”

“I should have listened to him” Aang's Roku says. “If I had stayed, if I had only known, I might have prevented it all.”

The Younger Roku shakes his head. “I am the _Avatar,_ Sozin! My duty is bigger than either of us! It's bigger than any nation!”

“The imbalance was in him all along.” Aang's Roku is nearly weeping as he speaks. “Destiny can lead us to greatness, but infamy is a kind of destiny, too.” As the Younger Roku and Sozin begin to fight, Aang's Roku cries. “I loved him so dearly that I thought such a darkness couldn't possibly take root in him. After this...” Roku's younger self wins the fight. Sozin fights with him over the Avatar State, and they destroy a whole wing of the palace, but neither of them attempts a killing blow.

They end up with identical burns and scrapes. Roku freezes, poised to deliver the final strike, but he can't. No one could, in his position. Tears stream from his face. 

“What are we doing, Sozin? I love you! How did we let this happen?”

Sozin stares up at Roku. 

“In the years after that,” Aang's Roku says, “we didn't speak in person. We exchanged letters. Some of his policies disturbed me, and I was able to talk him out of a few of them, but...” a sigh escapes through his tears. “We broke something in that throne room. There was something unbelievably precious between us, and we shattered it. The pain of that damaged bond haunted me as I settled with Ta Min on the island where I was born. And then... the island awoke. My people could escape, but I would have to tame the eruption until they were safely away.”

Roku, just as he is beside Aang, leaps up, and he fights the volcano. To do even a fraction of this at Makapu, Aang, Katara, Zuko, and Uncle had to work themselves nearly to exhaustion, and that was with warning. The eruption is much worse, the volcano larger, and with more vents. Roku begins to struggle, and then, Sozin arrives.

He fights the volcano with Roku. The people get away, and Roku begins to flee.

Sozin stops him.

“Sozin, what are you doing?” Roku asks.

Sozin closes his eyes. “We die together.”

“We don't have to die!” Roku yells.

“You stand in the way of progress,” Sozin says. “Tied to you and your balance, I can't lead the Fire Nation properly. Azulon will mourn me, and when he is ready to rule, he will take the crown. My regents already know what to do.”

“Sozin, no,” Roku says.

Sozin does not listen.

“He had built his entire reign around preparing for our deaths,” Roku says. “He timed the birth of his heir so that the boy would inherit a nation at war. The destruction of your people was not accomplished by his hand, but it sprang from him just the same. The wound of this war is deep. It cuts to the heart of you. But... I saved more than just my wife. My daughter's name was Rina. Her daughter was Ursa. Her children are Zuko and Azula, and the story isn't over."

“You can heal this wound, Aang.”

+

Twinkletoes wakes up with his heart racing. He explains his vision to everyone, which Toph would be inclined to think is fucking ridiculous if they weren't feeling the form of a village buried under ash. 

Some of what was left behind is astonishing. There are pets down there, uncleaned messes in rooms, meals still sitting on tables. But there are no people. If they go up the mountain, they are certain they'll find two men and two dragons.

Also, Zuko is having a major personal crisis as he realizes exactly how hard fate has singled him out. His heart is going more than Aang's did. Once in a while, he echoes back at Aang some phrase that he has said: “Heal the wound, yeah,” or “Avatar's soulmate.”

While Zuko and Aang panic together, Sokka and Katara are feeding off of each other's outrage. The idea of soulmates killing each other is outright disturbing even to Toph, and they hold Smellerbee's hand tight. Sokka begins to tremble, and Katara wraps her arms around him. He and Zuko are both gripping their left wrist. 

Their first, awful fight must be echoing in their heads right now. Toph can't even imagine. 

This pain and confusion is pure, flowing like ~~lava down a volcano's flank~~ a waterfall. It is almost as much as the Sealing.

They need... Hm.

Problem, meet solution. Toph stretches out their right foot and _twists,_ whirling the earth beneath Sokka and Katara. The stunned Water Tribe siblings stare as they are rotated towards their respective soulmates, and Sokka takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, voice shaky. “Soulmate magic.” He takes Zuko's hand and leads him away, down the island's shoreline. 

Katara wraps Aang up in a tight, fierce hug. “Aang, I am _so_ sorry,” she says.

“Not... not you,” Aang manages. 

“I know, sweetie. I know it wasn't me. I just mean, I'm sorry you have to deal with this. I'm here for you, okay?” She brings her hand up behind his head, running her fingers as much under his hair as possible.

Something is tugging on Toph's hand.

“Let's go,” Smellerbee says. She turns generally away from the others, upslope past Appa and Momo. Appa lows at them as they pass.

“What a piece of shit,” Toph says after they are sure the others won't hear.

“Who?” Smellerbee asks.

Toph shakes their head. “Sozin. Roku. Sozin's... entire fucking shit pile family for allowing it. Sozin's stupid fucking ass piss of a father should have let him go with his motherfucking soulmate!” Toph gestures angrily at the climax of their outburst and flinches when they accidentally bend half a ton of basalt out of the mountainside.

Smellerbee wraps her arms around them. “Hey. Toph. Come on, square up, Bandit. Those people are all gone.”

Yes, those people are all gone, but... but to think of how Sokka and Zuko began. Fifteen years without meeting, a relationship that began as prisoner and jailer. Toph thinks of the story Zuko told, thinks of the smash of a steel deck under their head, thinks of the horror of fighting their own soulmate, not for fun like they and Smellerbee do all the time, but in deadly earnest.

Perfectly identical mortal wounds.

It's offensive.

“Toph, you know we could never end up like that,” Smellerbee says.

“What if we'd met a year ago? What if I lived in Gaipan? Smellerbee, it happened to the _Avatar._ I know I'm better than Aang, but I've been doing this for years with fucking _badgermoles_ and he's been doing it for a couple of months, one of which he spent in a fucking coma, for fuck's sake, and he's almost as fucking good as me on a good day! If it could happen to the Avatar, it could happen to you and me!”

“I am not leaving your side,” Smellerbee says. She hurries ahead of Toph and drops down to her knees. “Toph, I love you. I am not leaving you. I will not control you. But you need to let go of this anger.”

“I don't see why,” Toph growls.

“Because you are the greatest earthbender in the world and I really need you to keep your temper under control on the active volcano.”

There is a tremor in Smellerbee's voice. Her tone is light, not humorous but almost suspiciously dry. Most people wouldn't notice it, but Smellerbee is afraid. Her heart is going almost as fast and hard as Toph's own...

Oh.

Toph is having a panic attack, and it is easier to panic if they are fighting something. Therefore, anger.

Fucking fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

“Can't I just make one eruption on the far side?”

“No,” Smellerbee says, and Toph leans forward and lets themself cry. Smellerbee does, too. Neither of them take long at it. As horrible as the story is, it almost feels inevitable. The Fire Nation has committed genocide and tortured Zuko and Jee and anyone else in their own society who doesn't fit in, so why _not_ this ultimate obscenity? 

Now that the panic is gone, a deep anger burns in Toph. If Aang can't kill Ozai, they will.

+

The horror ebbs away in Zuko's arms. Sokka is left with a desolation that feels strangely personal. The tragedy they've heard is his sister and her soulmate in a past life. Is this what it looks like every time a soulmate bond goes sour? Or does evil like Sozin's simply destroy everything it touches?

Sokka wants to lash out at everything around him. His sword hand itches. 

He wants to cut the stain of that kind of evil out of the world.

Aang might not be able to kill Ozai. Sokka can.

+

This reaction isn't completely natural. That much is obvious. Smellerbee knows her own feelings, and she knows what the shocking euphoria of recognizing her soulmate was like, and this is far closer to the unnatural joy of the Sealing than to even the most instinctive revulsion.

That doesn't change the feeling. Everyone is probably feeling the same rage towards the Fire Nation, a wretched animus like what drove her to pile blasting jelly at the base of a dam. 

It's nothing new, really. They've all wanted to tear the whole Fire Nation down, none of them trusts anyone but Zuko with building something new to replace it, not after what happened at Ba Sing Se, after what they've learned about the world. It's only the intensity that's new to them.

Smellerbee has felt it before. She'll feel it again. True loathing. 

It might not fuel the others by the time they get to Ozai, but it will _damn sure_ be there. Ozai is going die with his ambitions, and she's going to be the one to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in this chapter, we find out that Roku's soulmate was Sozin. Roku tells Aang about the events of his life, and they discuss the relationship. At Roku's Island, Sozin comes to help, and then chooses to die with Roku so that his son will be able to attack the Air Nomads in a few years without interference from the Avatar.
> 
> After Aang comes out of his vision with Roku, he tells the others, and much like when they realize they are soulmates, each pair has a soulbond-fueled revulsion reaction to what happened that leads to panic attacks. Toph, Sokka, and Smellerbee all privately vow to kill Ozai if Aang fails.
> 
> +
> 
> It's worth noting that this sequence of events doesn't fit the canon. Apparently, Azulon, Sozin's first child, was born well after the murder of Roku, when Sozin was a whopping 82 years old. Given that it's phenomenally irresponsible for a monarch to have no children for that long, and that Sozin was planning to kill Roku in time to use the comet to wipe out the Air Nomads, I've elected to push Azulon's birth to about 13-14 BG. That means that instead of Azulon being the firstborn of an octogenarian, his father was a much more reasonable sixty-fucking-eight, which is still massively old to be having kids, but at least it makes you think of Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards, instead of being genuinely concerned for... okay, no, you don't end up concerned about Sozin's health, just the possibility of Zuko's future existence. This also means that Iroh could be anywhere from in his fifties to in his nineties. I headcanon Ozai as being a somewhat youthful 48-54. and Iroh as somewhere between 60 and 70.


	18. Chapter 18

Firebending practice turns out to be good for panic attacks, and the bag of leaves Zuko collected five islands back turns out to be good for firebending practice. After Katara points out that Aang won't have as much trouble focusing on his breathing to quell panic if he's also using it to practice, Zuko joins him in bending practice and breathing exercises while Toph clings to Smellerbee and Sokka lays his head in Katara's lap and Momo curls up with Sokka. They all try to calm down while Smellerbee takes them away from Roku's Island.

For a moment, on the island, Aang almost believed that Sozin's cardinal sin was his obscene betrayal of Roku.

It's not. The Fire Nation is guilty of atrocities. Sozin's betrayal is emblazoned over them all, a lurid banner of iniquity, but it isn't genocide. 

Apparently, the Sealing isn't the only time Soulmates can be overtaken by emotions.

So Aang tries to get himself back under control. 

Zuko's leaf keeps flaring, and Aang is having just as much trouble, but by the time they land, they're both doing much better, and have even moved to working with an open flame, instead of an ember.

Their stop for the evening is a mile or two away from a little port town, with an even littler fishing fleet. Aang helps set up, but by the time the tents are all up, he's trembling.

“Sit, Aang,” Katara says.

He sits. Zuko lights the fire and Aang watches it. Orange and yellow flickers over the logs. 

“I didn't like feeling like that,” Aang says. “That kind of... that hate.”

Katara sighs and sits behind him, holding him the perfect way she does. “Nobody does. And people feel that more often than you think.”

“I know,” Aang admits. “I never used to, but then I came out of the iceberg and the whole world feels that way about someone. I wish the world I remember was a place, instead of a time, and I could just take you all there.”

“Do you think you could leave this world to burn if it was?” Katara asks into his ear.

He really wants to say yes. If the problems of the rest of the world could be somebody else's problem, he'd like to think he could leave them behind, but...

“I couldn't. If there was someone else whose job this is supposed to be... I wish I could give it all away, Katara. I wish I could give it to Uncle, or ask the spirits to do it, or anything like that!”

The fire flares up with Aang's proclamation, and he gasps and flinches back. Zuko stands up. “I need more leaves,” he says.

Aang takes a deep breath. “Me too.” He turns. “Katara, thank you,” he says.

“I wish I could fix this,” she says. Her eyes drift closed, and Aang studies her face. Katara has a lot of moods, and Aang is surprised that one of his least favorite is serenity, because it usually means a sad acceptance. One day, he wants to see happy serenity on her. 

And then she smiles. It's not the full blown joy of her regular smile, but it's something deeper, and as it occurs to Aang that he's getting his wish even as he wishes it, she continues on “I'm so glad you have someone who can fix it. Maybe love dying is part of what broke the world, but you're the one who's going to save the world by bringing it back.” He eyes open back up. 

Eye contact is intense at the best of times, even with Katara. He holds it for a moment, and his eyes dart down, and spirits, but he really wants to kiss her, but now is not the time. He hugs her tightly and hurries to follow Zuko.

Aang sits down, and he and Zuko work together again. After a while, Sokka collects Zuko and drags him off into the woods, presumably to work off some energy. The flurry of clanging swords from the forest lends credence to that theory.

Aang has been in a killing rage before. After Wan Shi Tong's Library, when Appa was gone. Working in tandem with La at the North Pole. Probably... probably at the Southern and Northern Air Temples.

Each time, it has felt like a defilement of his spirit, but Roku's Island is different. There, the feeling came on him from without. Part of his disgust and fury had been from him, but part of it was the urgings of the soulmate bond, a horrified rejection the instant he and Katara both recognized what they had learned.

This war cannot end with hatred and death. That will not heal the wound.

But it seems like there is no other way. What can he do to Ozai besides kill him?

And can he even manage that? Uncle is not even sure _he_ can beat Ozai, and he's _Uncle!_ What chance does Aang have?

Plenty, he knows. He's the Avatar. He's an airbending master. He's at least as good with water as Pakku or Zuko, and he's... making progress with fire. He knows that he is more evenly matched against Ozai than anyone besides Uncle.

Somehow, the fact that it's anyone's fight and the loser dies isn't comforting. Sokka says they'll reach Ozai before the eclipse is over. Sokka says it will be easy.

Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's right, but that's an argument he has with himself all the time.

Aang begins to move on to the next exercise. He pulls the flame from the leaf and joins it to his chi. He holds it, fueling as well as restraining. 

The fact is that Ozai needs to go down. If it happens according to Sokka's plan, it doesn't need to be Aang, but Sokka's plans rarely get that far in without something going wrong. The future feels set in stone, or more appropriately, in something well beyond his power to bend, like the stars. He can see himself, staring down Ozai, with the Firelord fully ready to cook him alive, and he's not sure if he can be the one to deliver the final blow.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and Aang whirls in place, flames swirling to defend him.

Toph yelps, and Smellerbee yells across the camp. “Aang!” They nurse their injured hand. “It's just me!”

“What the fuck, Aang?” Smellerbee shouts, leaping up.

“Toph, no, I'm so sorry!” Aang jumps up. “I didn't mean to... I'm... I didn't...”

Toph shrinks back from him and Katara runs over, pulling bending water from her flask and coating Toph's hand. “Aang, stay there,” Katara says, just as Aang's legs tense to flee into... well, the woods, he supposes, but he's not sure what good going there would do.

Zuko and Sokka come running over from camp (when did they get back to camp? How long was Aang working with the leaf?), and Zuko looks over Toph's hand as they cradle it.

“I am so sorry,” he says. “This is my fault.”

+

Everyone knows that you don't interrupt a novice firebender's practice close up, especially if they're stressed. It's common knowledge, like how butterfly bees that feed on fire lilies make bitter, toxic honey, or how a moving steam engine is incredibly dangerous.

Common knowledge in the Fire Nation. Something Zuko _should have known_ the others would have to be told.

“I should have told you!” he says, but Katara snaps a glare at him. He swallows. “If you startle someone who doesn't have much experience, you can get burned.”

“Yeah, you should have fucking told us, genius,” Smellerbee growls.

“Smellerbee, _shut up,”_ Sokka and Katara say at once.

“Excuse me?” Smellerbee says. She holds up her hand. It's healed. Katara turns to her, angry.

“Zuko forgot to tell us, but now we know, and I've fixed the damage. We're done. We learned something, and we are _not_ fighting tonight.”

“Hey!” Toph snaps. “Don't yell at her!”

“I'm not yelling!” Katara yells.

Fuck.

“This is my fault, okay,” Zuko says. “You're allowed to be mad at me!”

“I'm the one who burned Toph,” Aang says, and suddenly everyone is talking at once and Zuko backs away and makes a slow exit. He finds himself hiding behind a tree.

The tangled yelling behind him drops out suddenly. Zuko squeezes his eyes shut. His scars ache, his joints feel heavy and stiff, and he just wants to scream, or curl up in a ball and cry himself to sleep. 

“You too, huh?” Sokka says, coming to sit down next to him. “I mean, it's kinda hard to picture it right now. The six of us, saving the world. Toph's okay. Katara's got Aang. I think we're gonna move on from here tomorrow. No need to stay.”

Zuko shakes his head. “It was my—” 

“Zuko, you stupid motherfucker, it was _nobody's_ fault. I explained that to Smellerbee, and Toph backed me up once they got it.”

Zuko nods. “Okay. I made a mistake, though.”

“It's a mistake any of us would have made. Like how Toph didn't notice Aang was a monk until he started talking about uniforms, or how Suki kept us in prison for a week and a half because she thought we were hostile invaders.”

Zuko sighs. “Or how I burned—”

Sokka grabs his left wrist and pulls it up to his face. The handprint there is just as vivid as ever. Zuko turns his face away from it. Sokka shifts and moves against him, coming around to sit in front of him. He presses his own arm to Zuko's, laces their fingers together.

“I _cherish_ this scar, Zuko.” he says. “Your mistakes are your mistakes, but they're not _you._ Yeah, the circumstance sucked, but how many people get a mark to show exactly where the love of their life first touched them?” He kisses the scar on Zuko's wrist, and Zuko turns to look at him. Eyes meet, and Zuko holds the stare. Sokka's eyes are wide and guileless, overflowing with love. Zuko pulls their hands down together and leans in for a kiss.

“I don't deserve you,” he mutters against Sokka's lips.

“Yeah, you deserve even better. But you get me.” Sokka deepens their kiss so that Zuko can't answer, and it's an obvious ploy to get the last word, but he figures he can allow it this once.

When they get back to camp, Katara is asleep in Aang's lap, and Toph and Smellerbee have formed a cuddle pile with Appa and Momo and are snoring away. Aang presses a finger to his lips and shushes them, but Katara stirs before they have even sat down.

“It's okay,” she begins.

“It's not okay, you're exhausted,” Aang says. “Go sleep in the tent.”

Katara shakes her head. “You're comfortable.”

“I won't be long,” Aang says. “I'm just going to talk to Zuko and Sokka for a minute.” Katara shakes her head, but she goes. “She passed out on me about five minutes after you left,” Aang says to Sokka.

That should mean she's gotten about an hour of rest. “She tires herself out watching out for us all like that,” Sokka says.

Aang nods. “We're all freaked out. And Katara needs me, so I won't be long, but I need to know if you two are okay.” His eyes dart to their wrists.

Sokka looks at Zuko. Zuko takes a deep breath as he tries to analyze. 

Are they okay?

He catches Sokka's right hand in his left. “I think we all need some sleep, and Sokka and I need to eat first, but yeah, I think we're okay.”


	19. Chapter 19

Jee is impressed by the size of the ship Hakoda has captured. Not that he doubts for an instant that Hakoda can capture any size ship he wants. The man is both hypercompetent and surrounded by some of the most skilled warriors Jee has ever encountered, and also his second in command is a fucking mountain.

If Bato had boarded the _Snapdragon_ with intent to take her, Jee would have gotten pretty anxious. For that matter, when Bato boarded the _Snapdragon_ with perfectly peaceable intentions, Jee got nervous because _sweet syrupy fuck,_ can he scowl.

Given recent events, and certain advice he's gotten recently, Jee is willing to admit that some small portion of his reaction to and confidence in Bato may have been overawed attraction. 

All of these thoughts go flying away when he feels the gentle kiss of proper Fire Nation steel under his feet. Finally, a ship that feels like _home!_ He lets out a triumphant cry and bends to kiss the deck. 

“Hey, 'Koda, isn't that usually more of a getting off the boat thing?”

Jee freezes. He turns to look at Bato, who is smirking at him, leaning on Hakoda's shoulder. 

“I dunno, it looks like he's just impressed with how clean we keep it,” Hakoda says.

Jee straightens up to a slightly more dignified position. Suki is giggling behind him, the traitor.

“Gentlemen,” Jee says, “I haven't so much as seen a proper steel ship since my own was blasted out from under me three months ago. Be grateful I've stopped at kissing.”

“Gross,” Suki declares. “Are we all ready to talk strategy?”

“Of course,” Jee says, giving the deck another little pat as he stands up. 

Hakoda leads them all to the war room. It's almost the size of Jee's old bridge. He's going to ask for an even bigger ship when Zuko puts him into the admiralty. Kyoyo, Suki, Hakoda, Bato, Tho, Huu, Pakku, The Mechanist (apparently allies from somewhere in the Earth Kingdom), and a young man who Bato introduces as Pipsqueak all gather around the table.

Hakoda steps forward. “It's time we put all the pieces together. Now, this plan is largely my son's work, and I won't pretend I understand all of it. Damn kid is too smart.” That assessment is entirely correct. Sokka is relentlessly intelligent. “But we can go over who will be where, and when. There will be three main forces for our attack. Air Group will be the largest. I'll be in command there. Air Group will be trying to get through the Gates of Azulon. They'll keep the Fire Navy engaged, and if necessary, they'll guard the exit for the other two. The second largest will be Water Group. That's going to be commanded by Tho, here.” Tho, who, along with Huu, wears a leaf on his head and precious little else, waves. “They'll have most of the waterbenders, because they'll be showing up in The Mechanist's... underwater death traps. We've got eleven of them, and between them, they'll be carrying in an invasion force that can establish a beachhead. They'll also carry in Earth Group, a team of one hundred and fifty, including fifty eight Kyoshi Warriors, five armored wall tanks, Huu and his waterbending, every bender we could scrounge together, and my son and his team. Including the Avatar. They'll penetrate to Ozai's bunker and take him out. If they fail, they'll retreat to Water Group's beachhead and then Water Group will join Air Group and flee.”

Kyoyo frowns. “Chief Hakoda, why is the Avatar going with this attack? Wouldn't it make more sense to send him after Azula?”

Hakoda nods. “It would, except that we can't afford any instability. The White Lotus is in Ba Sing Se, preparing to strike. This doesn't leave this room, you understand?” There are nods all around the table.

“Good,” Hakoda says. “When word arrives at Ba Sing Se of our victory, the White Lotus will strike. Azula is just one bender, and she's young. I promise you that we are not underestimating her, but removing a freshly installed usurper, prodigy or not, is much easier than removing an entrenched monarch of the royal bloodline. Azula is a threat, but Ozai is first priority. Call the Avatar our backup plan.”

“We've already had one close call,” Jee says. “What happens if we lose Aang?”

Everyone flinches. The thought of that sunny, bright boy dead at Ozai's feet is chilling. 

“If we lose Aang and win the fight, then...” Hakoda sighs. “Then the Avatar has done his duty and we can finish solving our problems on our own while we watch for the next. If we lose Aang and lose this fight, then we're done. Everyone here needs to know that. If you can win this at the cost of the Avatar's life...”

Bato grips Hakoda's shoulder. Jee reaches across the table, and so do Suki and Kyoyo and almost everyone else. Hakoda's daughter is Aang's soulmate. Any order about the Avatar's life is an order about her life.

“If you can win this at the cost of the Avatar's life, you take the opportunity,” Jee says after a long while. “But you had better be fucking certain if you do, because anyone who lets those kids die for nothing will answer to everyone in this room before the Fire Nation ever has a chance to catch up to you.”

+

The thing about Jet is that he doesn't do well when he has no goal. Their bounty of cultural artifacts is safe in Aunt Wu's vault, but with nothing to shift his attention to, Jet is on guard constantly, and annoying the _piss_ out of the townsfolk. 

It's also starting to drive Jin a little crazy, so when a whole gaggle of formal-looking people comes up the road into Makapu, she almost cries with relief. It's far too late for them to join the invasion, but maybe these people will have a mission for them. At their head is either the Princess Yue the Avatar and his friends described to her in Ba Sing Se, mounted on King Kuei's bear, or else some kind of war spirit.

_Shit,_ that is cool.

Jin turns to Longshot. “The Water Tribe delegation?” she guesses.

Longshot nods. He gestures to her to go meet them, and she nods. Jin hurries forward, and as soon as he recognizes her, Bosco lets out an enthusiastic roar and speeds up. She has to sidestep in order to not get knocked over, and showers the weird creature with pets and affection. “You must be Yue,” she says to the girl getting down off the bear's back.

Yue nods. “I am. You must be Jin. Suki's told me a lot about you.”

Jin does not say something stupid like “all good things, I hope,” but the temptation is there. Instead, she spends the rest of the walk to Aunt Wu's telling Yue and her people what they've missed. She starts with the things that happened before her arrival in Makapu, finishing it off with an account of Ty Lee's discovering the Avatar.

Then she delves into the story of her travels with Jet and Longshot, to which Yue pays rapt attention. As they arrive at the little stretch of houses Toph bent out of the ground for new arrivals, Jin arrives at the crux of her story. Her timing is getting better. 

“So we opened the lid, and it was full of monk robes. There had to have been a hundred different styles. Some of them were a little worse for wear, but there was a handwritten note saying that it was all the traditional Air Nomad styles. Longshot started crying. I guess he was moved. I mean, I was, too, but he'd heard the whole story, so it probably hit him a little more.” Jin shrugs. “We brought it all back here, and now we're just kind of waiting for the next step.”

A pair of hands grips Jin's shoulders, and Jet very deliberately taps the side of her ear with his grass stalk. “You're playing diplomat again,” he says, and to Yue, “she's been making sure Azula's people stay away from me for a week.”

Yue flashes them a soft smile. She's watching her people get squared away with help from the locals. “You two are cute.”

Jin turns to Jet, more to confirm that he's blushing as hard as she is than anything else. “Oh, no,” she says. “We're not a couple. I mean, we're soulmates, but he's still not over his ex.”

“That is the least dignified way you could have put that,” Jet complains. “I'm. Um. I'm Jet.”

“I know,” Yue says. “I can see how Zuko would have a thing for you. You're cute, and you have 'bad idea' written all over your face.”

“Thanks?” Jet says.

Yue doesn't clarify whether that was a compliment. A woman in Earth Kingdom uniform, with her slightly greying hair in a precise noble's bun, steps out of the crowd, dragging a moderately-confused Water Tribe warrior after her. “Let's go get talking,” she says.

Yue introduces the woman as General Sako, and the warrior as Rarloq. They're both acting as military advisors to her. Jin recounts the barest facts of her story, and then she has to make introductions: Piandao, Aunt Wu, and Azula's representative Teshah to Yue, Sako, and Rarloq, Yue's party to Teshah, Piandao, and Aunt Wu, and the difficult concept of what Bosco is to the (slightly creeped out) uninitiated.

Yue explains that Bosco belonged to the Earth King, but that the Earth King is nowhere to be found and presumed dead, which everyone in the room knows is a bald-faced lie to give Teshah a plausible reason to not track down and kill the man.

~~Your Earth King, everyone.~~

Once the formalities are dealt with, Piandao speaks up. “There's one loose end we have to tie up on our own. Omashu.”

Jin blinks. She knows Omashu has fallen, but won't it just fall in line when Zuko becomes the new Firelord?

“It's in Fire Nation hands,” Jet says. 

Longshot comes into the room with tea. When he sets it down, he signs, “Do we expect that they won't give it back?”

Piandao grabs a map and spreads it out, having people weigh down the corners with cups of tea. “We do. Omashu is a fortress that stood for a century against attack. At this point, it has almost as much of a reputation as Ba Sing Se. It's also been handed over to a noble family that could try to push a claim on the Fire Throne. They're descended from a byblow of Firelord Zsett. It's a weak claim, but combined with control of as powerful a city as Omashu, it could be enough to take over the Fire Nation after we take out Ozai.”

“Ridiculous!” Teshah yells. “The family you are talking about is Lady Mai's!”

“And they haven't committed to our side,” Piandao says. “If they respond to our arrival by returning Omashu to its rightful ruler and joining the courts of the Earth Kingdom, I'm sure they'll be rewarded with lands of their own.” This last is said in a tone of command. It's one of Piandao's tricks to make his ideas seem like they're both necessary and not totally his idea.

Jet is vibrating beside her. Jin grabs his hand. “The notes we found with the cultural artifacts we recovered from the Fire Nation mention Omashu quite a lot,” she says. “We're pretty sure Sengge lived in or near the city. It would be a good idea to go there for that, anyway. Delegate Teshah, we're all on the same side of this war because the Fire Nation royal family is divided against itself. Lady Mai needs us to do this as much as anyone else, before she gets caught up in a power struggle.”

Teshah frowns, her animated face going quiet for a moment. Finally, she sighs. “I don't have much choice, do I?”

“No.” Piandao says. “Princess Yue, is the _Frostbite_ still near the coast?”

Yue nods. “They've joined the picket protecting Sha Mon Bay. We can recall them to shore.”

Everyone around the table looks at each other, worried. Finally, Princess Yue nods. “We'll do it.”

“I'll inform the city to expect your visit,” Teshah says.

“Our _visit_ will be their notification,” Rarloq growls.

“Yes, a hundred Water Tribe warriors, unannounced. That won't be a bloodbath,” Teshah argues.

“She has a point,” Jin says. “If they're going to fight, they're going to fight. Jet, Longshot and I will go with the team to free King Bumi, but I'll help draft a letter to Lady Mai's family first. We'll all work together on it. Princess Yue, Delegate Teshah, Master Piandao, and me.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Aunt Wu says.

There's more tense silence, and then angry agreement around the table. As Teshah and Piandao go with Aunt Wu to get papers gathered, and Yue's group leaves to organize for the redeployment, Jin leans back against Jet. “I am really sick of preventing a war eight times a day,” she says.

Jet wraps his arms around her. “I know. I'm sorry. I must be six of those.”

“You're twelve times a day. I don't count you.”

He chuckles. “Before I met you, I would've started the war by now.”

Longshot finishes cleaning up the tea and heads back to the kitchen. Jin watches him go and says, with a smile, “before you met me, you would've gone after Piandao and ended up flat on your back or dead.”

Jet leans over her shoulder specifically to give her an offended look. “I'm good enough he would have to kill me if I attacked him for real,” Jet says. “He told me so himself.”

“That time he kicked your ass,” Jin says. “The ass kicking is kind of the important part here, Jet.”

Jet rolls his eyes and leans back. His grass is getting a little bedraggled, so Jin grabs it and tosses it on the floor. “Hey!” Jet grumps. Jin leans over to grab a piece of grass from one of Aunt Wu's decorative planters. When she pops it into his mouth, he grumbles, “I could have done that.”

She laughs. “You could have, but you chose to complain, instead.” She extricates herself from his arms. “Now go help Longshot get our stuff ready. I'm not sitting around this place with _mopey, missionless Jet_ any longer than I have to.”

Jet sighs dramatically. “Fine,” he says evenly, but there's a smile in his eyes behind the otherwise blank face he's giving her. 

She chooses to address the smile instead of the pout, leaning forward to plant a gentle kiss on his lips and then shoving him out the door. “Good boy,” she says. She closes the door to the kitchen and turns to the map on the table. It's starting to curl back up without six cups of tea on it, and she presses the ends down carefully. They'll arrive at Omashu on the day of the eclipse if they time it right.

Piandao and Teshah come back in with paper, trailing an amused Aunt Wu behind them. They spread out the paper on the table, and Piandao expounds on some point of Fire Nation politics that Jin has missed far too much of the discussion to be able to follow.

When Princess Yue comes in, Piandao has them all set to writing the letter they want to send, so they'll have a baseline to work from.

As Jin puts hers on the stack, she frowns.

Wait.

_Did I just kiss Jet?_

Fuck.

She did.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for canon-compliant vomit with Toph being in the submarines.

It's good to have Jee around.

In the week after the fleet makes contact with the _Foxglove,_ Hakoda finds that they attract less attention trying to sneak past Fire Nation patrols, the ship's engines run smoother and cleaner, and morale is even up, largely because of the way Jee tends to stammer and blush around Bato, which is very obvious. Tosrom laughs about it and makes fun of Piram's confusion at not being the one someone develops a crush on for once. Rahn, the youngest of the crew, thinks it's cute, and loves to sit and gossip about it with Nilom and Hik. 

Distractions are valuable for morale, especially on the eve of battle, so Hakoda makes a point of inviting Jee, Suki, and Kyoyo to dinner aboard the _Foxglove_ the night before they arrive at the Black Cliffs.

In the morning, he's all business. The fleet has grown since his children left, and if the Fire Nation doesn't know their target yet, they will soon.

He signals the shore as they approach the Black Cliffs, and Appa flies down to meet them, landing on the deck with a low groan. Sokka jumps down first. “Dad!” he yells, and runs to wrap his arms around Hakoda. Katara goes for Bato, and then Smellerbee runs to embrace Pipsqueak and pick up The Duke. The Duke is going to be on one of Sokka's underwater boat things. The fact that that is likely to be the safest place is worrying. Zuko and Aang come down, and Toph makes a show of really enjoying having her feet on something bendable again. Zuko leans over the saddle and picks up a sleeping Momo.

Once Sokka lets go, Katara takes a hug while Sokka goes to Bato, and for a while it's just like any happy reunion. Zuko even hugs Jee. “How's Uncle?” he asks.

“I'm afraid I don't know,” Jee says. “But he seemed in good spirits when I left. Azula is... she's different, Zuko. Suki hurt her very badly, and she doesn't seem to have healed well.”

Zuko frowns. “She'll be easier to take down, then.”

Toph yells “Suki!” and bends the deck plating (fuck. Hakoda had forgotten she liked to do that so much) to drag her over to their little group. 

Suki waves shyly. “Um. Hi Sokka. Hi Zuko.” She looks around, and through the Kyoshi Warrior facepaint, it's hard to tell whether or not she is just realizing the others are there, but it does take a moment before she adds “hi Aang, Katara, Smellerbee, Toph.” She inspects all the other people milling around on the deck and then says “can I have a word?” and drags off Zuko and Sokka.

Huh.

Jee wanders over to Hakoda and says in an undertone “You'll find out in about two minutes when Sokka comes charging back out here looking like he just won a free lifetime supply of fire flakes.”

About two minutes later, a faint yell of “Awesome!” can be heard coming out of the ship's superstructure, and then Sokka bursts out onto the deck with a laughing Zuko and a mortified Suki behind him. “Guys, my girlfriend is so cool that Suki is dating her, too!”

Suki, shaking her head slowly, walks up and kisses Sokka soundly. “You're both that cool,” she says, then she points at Zuko. “And you're mine, too, Jerkbender.”

+

The ship gets hit by a catapult, and Toph retches into The Duke's helmet again. Smellerbee rubs her back gently. The muted blue light around them is making everyone nervous, because it feels like they should be drowning. The Duke smiles up at Smellerbee, and people say he's too little to understand what's happening, but the kid is some kind of scary smart, and he definitely knows he might not survive this. He knows they might all die.

“Okay, we're going,” Sokka says. He hits a control, and pulls a lever, and everything lurches.

Next to Smellerbee, Toph curls up even tighter. She's having a bad day, but once they get to shore, she's going to make her bad day Ozai's problem.

“You'd think the submarine wouldn't bother her any more than the boats,” Zuko says, bending them further into the bay past the Gates of Azulon. 

“Screw you, Sparky,” Toph says feelingly.

“You are _so_ not my type,” Zuko says.

Toph makes a rude gesture, then heaves into The Duke's helmet again. 

“I think the burning net is a bit much,” Aang says nervously. He peers out of the nearest window, and Smellerbee looks past him. Katara and Appa are out there, with Appa's head in a giant bubble. Sometimes, Smellerbee forgets just how amazing Katara is, and then she does something like this almost _casually,_ and gets a lot more intimidating again.

Fuck. They're actually doing this.

Smellerbee checks her equipment. She has armor that Toph bent for her out of Fire Navy scrap. Three swords, eight daggers, a dozen throwing knives. 

If only Longshot was here. 

And Jet, she supposes. Apparently, they were fine when Jee and Suki last saw them, but they've had no word since then.

Suki grips Smellerbee's arm. “Hey. It's going to be okay. We've got Sokka.”

Smellerbee can't help the little smile that brings. “Not Aang?”

“No, Sokka's worth at least two of me,” Aang says.

“No I'm not,” Sokka says. “We're about to come up.”

“Thanks for the warning Snoozles, but I think stuff is done coming up for now,” Toph says. “I'm empty. Sorry about your helmet, The Duke.”

“We'll wash it out with ocean water,” The Duke says with a shrug as they surface. He and Pipsqueak follow Smellerbee up to the top of the submarine to grab some water and... oh, that's gross. 

Toph flops dramatically onto the upper hull. Katara comes up next to them and hops off, landing inches from Aang. “Are you all ready?” Katara asks.

There are nods all around. Zuko kisses Sokka, and then Sokka passes the kiss along to Suki. When he stands up again, he's got his determined face on. They clamber together onto Appa. 

“Let's go make some noise,” Smellerbee says, grabbing the reins. “Yip yip.”

Appa rises up under Smellerbee's control. 

Caldera City is on high alert. Smellerbee takes them fast towards the docks, and Sokka and Zuko lob blasting jelly charges over the sides as she approaches the big ballistae and makes attack runs. The submarines come up, and they protect the forces coming onto shore.

Off in the distance, when they get high enough up, the battle at the Gates of Azulon is visible. It's... it's bad. Ozai's ships are outnumbered two to one, but most of them are steel-hulled monsters, tearing through the ranks of Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe ships. Smoke streaks the sky. The tanks start moving below, and it's time for the next phase.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts with a description of a full-on battle against overwhelming odds. Be ready for that.

An Earth Kingdom city flying Fire Nation banners is an obscenity. The fact that it's Omashu just makes it worse. Omashu is one of the Earth Kingdom's greatest symbols of freedom. King Bumi is a renowned military leader (and weirdo), and freeing him is the top priority.

Nevertheless, Jet has to admit that he's intimidated by the prospect. The occupiers have obviously decided to fight, and they know that the eclipse will rob them of their power soon.

They're charging. Against the allied force of maybe as many as sixty fighters, these four hundred Fire Nation soldiers are charging, tanks guarding their left and right, all to defend the long, narrow bridge up to the city's gate. 

Odds are, none of these people have dealt with Water Tribe warriors before. If they had, they'd be slower to attack.

General Sako and her team of five earthbenders stomp and lift, and walls sprout out of the ground to either side of the smaller army. Longshot looses his first arrow, and that's the signal that they're in bowshot.

Twenty Earth Kingdom troops unleash their arrows. General Sako's team roughs up the ground between them and the Fire Nation army. 

Their first surprise comes when Longshot's arrow hits the enemy ranks and explodes, then twenty more explosions ripple across the enemy's ranks. Another volley of exploding arrows rips into the enemy. 

They don't have enough archers for the sort of hideously lethal massed longbow assault that would traditionally make odds this uneven almost fair. They're outnumbered almost eight to one. Blasting jelly arrows won't fix this.

More walls come up around them as the tanks begin their attack, and then flames arc over the battlefield.

See, now _that_ looks more like a massed longbow assault.

Fuck.

Jin raises her borrowed shield up over both of them, and they huddle together. ~~This is actually pretty nice.~~ Flames wash over the shield. There are a few yells of pain from nearby, Water Tribe warriors or Earth Kingdom soldiers. Jet and Jin share a frown. Someone's quiver explodes behind them.

“I'm about to die,” Jet says.

“You can't be sure of that,” Jin says.

“There are four hundred Fire Nation soldiers over there, and they're really intent on all sixty three of us dying.”

“Three hundred and seventy five,” Longshot says aloud. Jet turns to raise an eyebrow at him. “About half these archers are competent,” he explains, then he fires again.

Great, thanks Longshot. That's so encouraging.

“Look, Jin, in case we don't make it,” Jet begins, but she slaps him. Not hard. It isn't a full-blown haul off and strike, but it gets his attention.

“You can tell me you love me after this, stupid,” Jin says. She raises up their shield again, and again, flames gush over the sides. It's already getting brutally hot.

Jet blinks.

And then the front of the Fire Nation line crashes into their pathetic defense. Flames gutter through them, barely deflected, again and again, by the few benders they have.

The sky goes dark. The fires stop. 

Jet's turn. 

He rushes forward, blades swinging into the Fire Nation ranks. He catches one sword, and then another. They're charging, the earthbenders pushing towards the city while the few waterbenders they have linger behind and try to heal the injured.

They're not going to break through. There are too many soldiers, too much equipment, too much power arrayed against them. Their charge proceeds, protected by walls. 

The tragic irony is that each of these warriors is probably perfectly capable of killing eight of the soldiers in front of them in a row. It's the doing it all at once that seems to be eluding them, and then there's the tanks. Men begin to fall. Their charge slows. It stops. The Fire Nation starts to push back. 

A single massive boulder crashes into the rear of the Fire Nation ranks. It rolls, smashing people who never knew it was coming. Jet beats a hasty retreat back to the relative safety of their ranks.

The banners are down. Another rock flies from Omashu, and another. People are coming down from the parapets and walls of Omashu.

Earthbenders.

Omashu is liberating itself.

Jet rushes back to Jin's side as the new forces slam into the back of the Fire Nation's astonished army.

“Jin,” he says.

“Shut up and fight,” Jin says. 

~~Jet is so in love right now.~~

+

Uncle thinks he's so damn clever. He's correct, actually, it's just that he forgets that Azula can put the pieces together as well as he can.

Ty Lee's news about the Avatar makes sense, of course, because killing the _Avatar_ can't have been that easy. The fact that the White Lotus and all her other “allies” have been hiding him from her only serves to drive home the point that this alliance is never going to survive past the Day of Black Sun. Of course, that's all happening clear on the other side of the world. They won't move against their own ally until power is good and secure in the Fire Nation.

Azula is willing to let Zuzu have that. She's not willing to be assassinated, arrested, or even _inconvenienced_ in her own palace by her own uncle. No way.

So she listens to reports all evening and goes to bed early. Mai trails after her, and whatever it is that's gotten into Mai lately, Azula kinda likes it. Mai supports her through the pain in her leg.

What she wouldn't give to have never taken that fall.

“You're really going to share power with Zuko?” Mai asks.

Azula nods. “If my idiot brother and his boy toy want the Fire Nation, they can have it. He'll probably even cede the Colonies over to me once he gets used to the idea that I'm not leaving. If I really need more territory, I can play the long game and take it from him later after I've built up a stronger military.” ~~The colossal damage that an arms race would do to a war-ravaged economy is somebody else's problem.~~

Mai shakes her head. “They won't let you stay Earth Queen.”

“They can try to get me out of the palace if they want,” Azula says. “I'm sure everyone would learn something.”

Mai opens her bedroom door. “You know your brother must be training the Avatar. Taking on a twelve year old who's been frozen for a hundred years is a little different from trying to fight a fully-trained Avatar.”

“You may be right,” Azula says. “If only there was some event coming up that might let me overpower the Avatar.” The thought of hitting the ~~innocent, sweet little~~ monk with lightning powered by Sozin's Comet is ~~reprehensible, and she knows it~~ reassuring. One more problem taken care of. “Then we just find the next one and raise it to be loyal to me. It's not my fault that great grandpa Sozin died before he could do step two, but then, he was still good enough to kill an Avatar _without_ the comet.” Mai lowers her onto the bed, sinking down next to her. “It's not as hard as people think, killing an Avatar.”

She feels the effects of the eclipse begin. “Lee,” she calls out.

Mai blinks. She sits up. “What's going on? Why are you calling for security?”

Lee, the head of Azula's guard, comes around the corner. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“The eclipse is beginning. Execute the purge. No one but the White Lotus gets hurt. If that means they get away, then they get away. Chase them out of the city, but don't hurt anyone except for them. And restrain General Iroh exactly the way I told you. I'll be there to inspect your work after the eclipse.”

Lee bows. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“The first step to keeping my throne is getting rid of the White Lotus,” Azula explains when Mai just keeps staring.

“I understand that,” Mai says. “It's a good plan. But why are you keeping your uncle alive?”

Azula sighs. ~~Father wouldn't, and he'd think it's weak. Azula isn't Father. What Father thinks doesn't matter. Father might be dead by now anyways. She hopes he is. (But what if he isn't? What will he do to her?)~~ “He's still my _uncle,_ Mai. I'd rather not kill him. It's not like I'm Father. Besides, if we kill Uncle, Zuko will keep the war going just to kill me.”

“You want to use him as a bargaining chip,” Mai says.

“Dear old Uncle Iroh is going to help me keep Ba Sing Se,” Azula gloats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the battle:
> 
> It was the liberation of Omashu. The Fire Nation forces were kicking everyone's asses, and Jet tried to confess his love to Jin, but she told him to save that for _after_ the fight because invoking the "I love you" *immediately gets killed* trope seemed unwise. Then, when the Fire Nation seemed like they were about to win, Bumi freed the city and just, like, totally demolished the rear of the Fire Nation lines.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are multiple visceral descriptions of getting stabbed in the first scene.

When carrying out an open invasion with the express and inevitable goal of killing a man, it should not be surprising to find that that man has gone to the deepest, most defensible part of his home and put as many barriers as possible in your way. Sokka and Zuko fight their way through a fourth set of guards, and Sokka finds himself surprised at the resistance. 

“Why does he have people this far in?” he asks.

Suki ducks under his arm and jabs a fan into the face of the swordsman he's dueling. Zuko is combining swordplay with a stunning display of waterbending, absolutely carving through the ranks of eclipse-weakened firebenders. 

“The sun is almost out,” Aang yells from where he's casually kicking the asses of five guys at once.

“He was expecting an attack,” Toph says, slinging a huge rock around behind Smellerbee to take out an attacker. “I mean, we all knew that.”

“But why did he expect us to get this far?” Sokka asks.

Toph punches out to her left, and the wall goes flying back. “Ask him yourself,” she says. 

More soldiers come running up behind them. Sokka looks at where Toph has opened up the wall. There's a door on the other side. Sokka runs to it, and pulls it open. The metal is hot, but everything down here is hot, so that's nothing new.

There are a dozen men with long spears inside the door.

“Oh, no,” Sokka mutters. He slams the door shut. There are another two dozen soldiers outside, so this is an improvement only in that the new dozen aren't in the hallway with them.

“There's a whole buncha guys in there,” Sokka says.

The door starts to move, and he slams his back against it. The seven of them against thirty six elite guards is... pushing it. They've dealt with worse, but not often and not quickly. Besides, these guards seem to know how to take on benders.

Hm.

They know how to take on _benders,_ but do they know how to take on a warrior?

“Smellerbee, Suki, Zuko!” Sokka yells.

They disengage to come over to Sokka. “I'm gonna take the guys in there on my own.”

“What?” Zuko says. “Sokka, what the fuck do you think—” 

“I really want to kiss you to shut you up, but you need to keep the waterbending. Suki and Smellerbee are gonna defend you while you spot heal any dangerous wounds. You're the best healer we've got. I love you, Zuko, and I trust you. You can do this.”

Zuko swallows.

“Okay,” he says. “I trust you, too.”

Sokka takes a deep breath while Zuko gathers bending water. He nods. “Go.”

Sokka lets the door fly open, and he plunges his sword blindly into the spot he's just left. He feels a moment of resistance and then a sudden slide as his blade punches through armor and into flesh. He drives forward, shoving at the guard, but he doesn't have the strength to push his sword through the man all the way. He lets gravity do the work of pushing the man back into the throne room. Sokka pulls his sword out and kicks the man's chest. A blast of wind from Aang slams into the man and tosses him further, shoving his comrades back. Sokka rushes into the room, whipping out his boomerang and throwing it over the ranks of men while he swings his sword.

A spear catches him in the shoulder and he drops the weapon, but he backs off and drops to grab the spear of the man he's already killed. The pain of the spear hit barely even registers before it's closing, and the couple of thrusts that follow it are aimed too high and miss him or get caught in his armor. He hefts the spear and swing back into the fight, smiling in satisfaction as his boomerang clocks one of the guards over the head, taking him out of the fight.

It's heavier than Sokka is used to. But that also means it's more solid. He doesn't hesitate to block and deflect with it, momentarily throwing back Ozai's guards. Spear heads take little gouges out of the haft of his weapon, but Sokka isn't particularly worried by that. They start pressing in on the right, and Sokka knows this dance. He's danced it at Six Piers Burning and Crescent Island, he's danced it at the North Pole and at Wan Shi Tong's library and in Ba Sing Se and just about everywhere he's been, these last months.

Sokka knows the next step in a fight where he's outnumbered this badly, and usually someone intervenes before the next step. This time, there's no one to stop the inevitable attack from the left, the one his eye is too fucked up to see coming.

He pushes the right side attacker's thrust away and punches his spear through the man's gut. A pair of spear heads pound into his back, through the armor, and he moves forward with the impact, rushing off of the impaling blades. Zuko screams, and there's pain, but there's also anger. The wounds begin to close up as the weight of Sokka's kill drags his stolen spear down. He grabs the spear his opponent has dropped and whirls around, only to catch a hard slash across his forehead. Blood pours down, and he spits.

“Is that it, Fire Nation?” Sokka says.

The guards all stare, and he stands up straight as the pain in his back recedes. There are nine of them and only one of him, and this is a fight he shouldn't be able to win, but Piandao took down a hundred men once, and Zuko got in that sword duel with those eight guys that one time, and Sokka might not be a legendary bender, but he'll be _damned_ if he's not good enough with a spear to get past these guys.

He charges in again as Aang shouts “totality! There's no more firebending!” out in the hall.

Sokka has eight minutes to kill Firelord Ozai.

He can't even reach the man right now. Instead, he thrusts towards the nine guards in a series of jabs that prevents them from spreading out properly to stop him. The bleeding over his eyes stops moments before he catches one guard on the temple, then a spear lances into his forehead in a thrust. He leans back and still feels skin tearing and a hard crack of blade against skull, but he slips away from the worst of the blow and Zuko is already on it while Sokka spins and slams the side of his spear into the right end of the guards' formation. They're starting to back off and maneuver around him. He reaches up and grabs a missed thrust by the haft, pulling as hard as he can. The spear comes loose in his grasp. 

He pokes out with the back of the new weapon's shaft, fending off more blows. Another strike catches him hard in the left shoulder blade, and he barely holds onto the spear. As the wound begins to seal, Sokka takes two huge steps to the right and throws the spear in his right hand at Ozai. The guards rush to deflect it, and Sokka catches one on the back of the neck with the spear in his left. In return for his efforts, he gets a pair of hard shots that scrape across his ribs, mostly fouled by his armor. He swings back, throwing the guards off. He's starting to work them around to behind him, so he backs off, this time further into the throne room, closer to Ozai.

Throwing knives whip in through the door, and there are several satisfying thunks.

Suddenly, Sokka is facing only four men.

“Why won't you die?” one of them says.

“Too busy. Maybe some other day.”

Sokka tastes blood. He spits it out and rushes in again. Four enemies is more manageable than twelve, and he blocks blow after blow, finally getting through one guard's defenses, then another's, and then, the last two are child's play.

He turns toward Ozai. “Trying to kill a Water Tribesman with spears? You're dumber than I thought.”

Ozai stares at him. “You must be the _soulmate.”_ He injects a deep contempt into the word.

Sokka nods. “Yeah.”

“Pathetic,” Ozai says.

Sokka thrusts with the spear. Ozai evades, and Sokka tries to chase after him.

Ozai hasn't just spent a solid four minutes in combat, getting stabbed repeatedly.

When Sokka runs after the Firelord, his legs feel sluggish, and Ozai manages to duck behind his throne. There's a click, and then a roar as flames come up all around the throne, blasting away from it. Sokka rushes back away from the throne. He can't circle around, and if he walks facefirst into those flames, there's little Zuko will be able to do for them.

Ozai smirks at him through the flames, and then a rush of water smashes down the fire right in front of Sokka. Sokka smirks back and runs through the gap. 

Ozai backs away. Sokka jabs at him, and Ozai puts the throne in between them. He breaks for the gap in the flames, and Sokka throws his spear.

His aim is off. The flared out side of the blade catches Ozai in the side, but the Fire Lord keeps going, grabbing a spear off the ground just as the flames explode back into the gap Zuko opened for him in the throne's defenses.

Zuko is looking at the ongoing fight, defending himself madly with his dao as his father bears down on him with the spear. He has no bending water. No one can stop this except for Sokka.

His boomerang is on the other side of the flames, where it bounced to after knocking out one of the guards. Sokka has only seconds. 

He dives forward. These flames are not the gently licking kind you find in a campfire. They are tamed fire, blasting into Sokka. His armor catches and shrivels and burns, agony wreathes his middle, but Sokka pushes through. He hits the ground and rolls forward, catches his boomerang's handle, comes up, and hurls it at the back of Ozai's head. He thinks he hears a loud smack, but he passes out before he can be sure.

+

Azula leans against Mai's shoulder in the doorway. Iroh stares at her. “Azula, you don't have to do this,” he says.

Azula rolls her eyes. “Relax, Uncle. I'm not going to kill you.” Her eyes wander to his restraints. She's worried, which makes sense, but she needn't be. He's well contained, and breathing fire can only get him so far. He's essentially helpless like this. Azula gestures to the circle of Dai Li around him. “They will, if I tell them to, but I'm not going to do that, either. You see, you're a valuable hostage.”

Iroh closes his eyes. “I am sorry, Azula. I should have been there for you.”

“Been there for me?” Azula yells, so suddenly that Iroh flinches. “You were going to kill me!”

Iroh shakes his head. “I couldn't. Azula, I know you do not believe me, but I love you. I am so sorry that you cannot believe anyone loves you. I know that I share the blame. I should have protected you.”

“And made me weak like Zuko? Fuck you, old man!” Flames crackle from her, and Iroh opens his eyes. She is standing on her own, Mai standing back from her. The pain of standing unsupported is clear in her eyes, beside the pains of her life, of fear and hurt and betrayal. It dances like firelight. Electricity arcs across her fingers. “If you were worth any less, I'd kill you here and now!”

Iroh sighs. Azula storms out, Mai running to her side to support her.

Encased in stone, Iroh can do nothing but weep for his niece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first scene, Sokka sees Ozai's throne room is full of nonbending guards and elects to take them on by himself. He has Zuko hang back and heal wounds as they appear, taking advantage of their soulbond. It works, but Sokka gets stabbed a lot and is too exhausted to stop Ozai from escaping. He barely keeps Ozai from killing Zuko with a spear, but has to inflict one more very serious wound on himself to do it by diving through fire, and he passes out before he can see the results of his actions.
> 
> Also: Sokka says Zuko is the best healer they have in this chapter. He's correct-ish, but not by a lot. Katara has a better innate understanding of waterbending, but healing draws on a similar understanding of chi to what Iroh has taught Zuko for the last few years, so Zuko heals with more precision and confidence, but Katara is faster and more powerful.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains death and lightning.

Zuko drops in the corner of Aang's vision. 

As he turns, a spear flies into the spot where Zuko was standing. Sokka is lying, _burning,_ on the floor, and Ozai is scrambling to his feet. Aang pulls water from Katara's bending supply and rushes past Ozai to douse Sokka. Katara and Toph yell, but Toph is yelling at Katara.

Aang ignores them both, rushing to Sokka's side and wrapping the bending water around him.

He finds a tangle of burns, and he focuses hard, pushing all of the power he has into healing Sokka, because this could be a fatal wound if he isn't healed _now._

There is shouting and crashing, and the fight moves away, except for Smellerbee and Suki, standing guard. Aang is exhausted, and he doesn't know how long he spends coaxing Sokka back to life, but when he looks up from a groaning Water Tribe warrior, the eclipse is over. He can feel the sun, a distant pulsing of power. Firebending is slowly returning.

If Ozai is still... up... then they've failed.

+

There are only fifteen guards around Ozai, but they're rushing him away faster than Toph can close off routes. She runs beside Katara, just the two of them, trying to take out the Firelord.

Assuming Zuko survives to take the throne. Whatever happened back there was nasty beyond belief. 

Ten of the guards turn to face them, and Toph is so tired, but she refuses to yield. Earth has never refused her before, and it won't start now. Individual spikes of stone rise up to meet each guard, and they're forced back, but it's _slowing her down,_ and it can't be long before this fucking eclipse is over. Katara sends water whips out into Toph's spike field, and Toph launches the spikes into the guards. A few of them catch, pinning bodies to walls, but not enough. 

They advance, slowly.

Toph pulls up more spikes. She can feel Katara pulling sweat off of her skin, pulling water from wherever she can get it, feel the tunnel getting dryer and hotter as she punishes the guards with wave after wave of stone.

They take down the ten and run forward.

“He went left,” Toph says when they get to a fork in the path, and they're slowly, slowly closing the gap. She reaches out and, with a deep effort, she closes off a path ahead of them. 

Ozai and his guards stop.

Toph and Katara keep running, pelting down the tunnel, and just as they're about to turn the corner, there's a laugh.

Toph feels a hot breeze on her forehead, and she flinches back, pulls the stone around her, grabs Katara, and seals them both in a little alcove as a column of fire rushes down the corridor.

Toph isn't about to give up. As she feels Ozai and his guards round the corner, she pushes spikes out into the guards and the Firelord.

Two guards and Ozai evade. Ozai whirls, and something cracks hard into the side of Toph's little wall. Stone chips and flies away. A second impact has Toph bending back further into the stone, putting more rock in between them and Ozai.

“What's he doing?” Katara gasps.

“I don't know, probably lightning,” Toph says. “Apparently firebenders can do that, unless you get the discount ones like Zuko.”

Another few shots burrow into the stone, but Ozai gives up and starts moving away. Toph slowly bends them out of the rock, but it's too late. There's a new contingent of guards between them and the Firelord, and some of them are benders.

+

A wash of fire is the first warning that firebenders have reached the throne room. Suki rushes towards the door with her shield, and Smellerbee starts throwing knives. Aang joins them, throwing every element he has available at them. At first, it's just two, then three at once, but that's easy enough to handle. After all, Suki has taken on four firebenders at once all on her own.

Suki stands out in front, sweeping flames away with fan and shield, while Aang takes out the enemies one at a time.

There's a groan behind them. It sounds like Sokka. Aang drops the last firebender, and Suki stays out, vigilant.

A booming, grinding sound far off down the corridor tells her little besides that Toph is still alive. She turns to look, and there's Ozai, coming around the corner, gesturing to his guards.

No.

There's nobody else with him. Why is he gesturing like that?

His fingers point towards her. Suki brings her shield up.

There's a flash of searing white light, and she feels her eardrums burst from the sound as pain rips through her, from her shield, across her body, and she spasms and yells in ag

+

Suki crumples, and Aang stands firm. “Suki!” Smellerbee yells, and she runs for the door.

“Smellerbee, no!” Aang yells. “He'll kill you if you go that way.”

She ducks behind the door, a few moments before Ozai steps through, and immediately sends out a wave of fire. Aang stands firm, deflecting the attack away from Sokka and Zuko with airbending and firebending. He steps forward, pushing against raw power with raw power. 

Now would be a really great time to go into the Avatar State, but it remains out of reach.

Ozai takes another step into the throne room, and Aang throws stone into the mix of his counter, pulling up a sloppy wall and then vaulting over it to throw a blast of air at Ozai. Ozai stumbles back, and rallies, pushing back through the ground he's lost. He opens his mouth and _screams_ a fire at Aang, so that Aang has to back up to his wall, and then Ozai extends two fingers and whips them at Aang. Electricity crackles around his fingertips.

Lightning.

Aang isn't going to be lucky twice.

But there is no flash of light. Ozai drops to his knees.

Smellerbee stands behind him. Blood coats her right hand. 

“Aang?” Sokka says.

Aang brings the wall down, more than a little messily. Zuko and Sokka are dragging each other to their feet. They stand around as Smellerbee draws a second knife. She circles around in front of Ozai. Toph and Katara cross by the door, and Katara remains crouched next to Suki, water glowing over her.

Toph crosses into the room. She draws close to Ozai as he drops to all fours, reaching for the long, curved dagger in his back, wedged between two ribs.

_You can heal this wound, Aang._

Aang steps forward. “F-firelord Ozai,” he begins, but Ozai cuts him off with a snarl.

“You dare address me? You're a _relic,_ not a person.”

Aang flinches.

“You and your forefathers—” 

Ozai breathes a plume of fire that sends them scattering back. He finally finds the dagger in his back, and he pulls. A scream escapes him, and suddenly Smellerbee has him by the hair, pulling him back.

“No!” she yells. “No speeches! No quarter! Freedom!” 

She plunges her dagger into Ozai's throat.

Time seems to stop for a moment. Blood leaks silently over Smellerbee's already-stained fingers. Tears stream down her face, and she pulls the blade out so fast that blood sprays from the edge. Aang cries out as he is splattered with death, and Zuko shouts as he and Sokka are both hit with the fanning red, but Sokka does not flinch.

Ozai gasps and claws at his throat.

He falls to the ground. Toph catches Smellerbee in a tight embrace before she can fall.

Aang stares at the unhealed wound.

Death repaid with death, murder on top of murder, war to answer war. Aang stares at Smellerbee. She is kneeling in the slowly growing pool of Ozai's blood, and it isn't by any stretch the first life she's taken.

Maybe that's the worst part. Maybe the worst part is that Aang is glad it wasn't him. Maybe it's that he's glad it's over. At least now, his part in all this loss and sorrow can finally end.

How many are dead in the harbor?

How many are dead in the palace?

How many are dead in the sea?

Is Suki gone?

Is Hakoda?

Is Jee?

Has he survived another horde of the people he loves?

Blood begins to soak into the soles of his shoes. Zuko is crying into Sokka's shoulder, still wet with his father's blood. Aang stares at the lifeless body.

_You can heal this wound, Aang,_ Roku's plea says, but Ozai lies dead on the floor. No victory without death, and soon, death for Azula as well.

+

Suki wakes up the day of the coronation.

It doesn't feel right, to celebrate. Hakoda sits in his place of honor to Sokka's right, and Suki to Zuko's left, one of the few people he trusts there.

Zuko isn't surprised when he finds Aang in the courtyard that night.

“Sokka said you were feeling kinda down,” Zuko says.

Aang nods. He's squatting down in front of a flower, staring at it. “I want to run away,” he says. “Take Appa and just...” he makes a swooshing noise. “But... I love Katara so much. I can't do that to her.”

Zuko sits down next to him. “I get that. We've sent out word of the victory, and I'll have so much help, but... I'm supposed to lead a whole country now. I barely even led a ship.” Aang laughs bitterly. Zuko has to admit that his plight would almost be funny if the circumstances were different. “It's not your fault. And there's no other way it could have gone. I... he was going to kill you. I don't even know how to stop lightning. I know there's a way. I've seen Uncle do it. But...” he shakes his head.

“I just keep thinking,” Aang says, “that no son should have to stand in his father's blood to be safe.” His voice wavers, and a tear drops off the end of his nose.

Zuko can agree with him there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of part 3! Part 4 is going to take a while to come out. I'm several thousand words in, but the next two to three weeks are looking to be... stressful. Due to the particular stress I'll be dealing with, my time for writing will be limited. Look for part 4 to begin posting in early to mid October.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr](https://momo-with-a-knife.tumblr.com/)


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